Updike's Witches

I recently did something that I think I have never done before ... I read a couple books and then immediately watched the movie made from one of them. I no longer remember what inspired me to pull from the library stacks The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike. But this late fall, I was off and running/reading.

I have read Updike before. I read several of his books prior to introducing him at the Connecticut Library Association Annual Conference in 2000. After the Conference, I also read the book he was promoting at that time (Gertrude and Claudius) as well as an older collection (Bech is Back - which he most thoughtfully inscribed to me).

This time I did the following in this order:

1. Read The Witches of Eastwick
2. Read The Widows of Eastwick
3. Watched the movie: "The Witches of Eastwick"

The action in The Widows takes place 30 years after the activities of The Witches. The Widows is an interesting take on the aging process, in addition to the other themes which follow from one book to the other. The theme of aging and those changes is a one which Updike explores in other works (most notably to me, the Rabbit series).

I was disappointed and disturbed by the movie adaptation. In both of the books, the women characters (Sukie, Jane, and Alexandra) are portrayed as strong women with a bond with each other, and having developed/found their unique skills which are most powerful when they are together. Darryl as a character arrives in Eastwick after there has already been action from the women. In the movie, however, Darryl (played by Jack Nicholson) is portrayed as the force which develops and binds the women's powers.

In the Wikipedia entry on The Witches (the book) it notes:

Updike described his novel as "about female power, a power that patriarchal societies have denied." Many scholars viewed it as strongly pro-feminist, "an intelligent engagement with feminism, and a rare case of a male novelist writing from women's points of view." Some have expressed concern that the book may be misogynistic, as it seems to reinforce the patriarchal conceptions of women as witches and of women requiring a man for personal growth; others believe that the book may be more of a satire of such ideas.

The movie clearly takes a different tack, as a vehicle for Nicholson, and focuses on his presence as the driving force - and the ending of the movie is a dramatic difference from the book - having repurposed one of the plot lines.

It has been interesting.

I will also confess, that part of the attraction for me was the setting. Eastwick is a fictional town on Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island. It is a setting with which I am familiar. I could see the setting in my minds' eye ... could hear the voices (and accents) ... could almost smell the salt air, and the mustiness endemic to older, wooden-framed homes near the salt-water coast.

I recommend the books - both of them. The movie, not so much.

The future (of libraries, of library services)

OK, so we had videos (Betamax then VHS), and then moved to DVDs. What will be the next technology? "Streaming" is what I had been told. Certainly that is the way folks like Netflix and Hulu are moving. This may be a way for libraries to deal with the "streaming" issue, or may be an interim step. I am not sure which. Flix on Stix

Mita Williams (New Jack Librarian) from Canada has a long and thoughtful post about the future of libraries. She called it The future of libraries is what we create in the present. She closes with the following, pithy statements:

When I talk about the future I really mean this afternoon.
When I talk about the present I really mean this morning.

Eric Hellman has a post called Lots of Markets, Lots of Business Models. In it he talks about the structure of the book publishing industry and starts off with this interesting analogy:

The book industry is a lot like the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union consisted of fifteen ethnically divergent states (soviets) stitched together by a highly centralized government model. When that government model weakened, it turned out that there was little holding the soviets together. The Soviet Union no longer exists.

He goes on from there to talk about the shift in book publishing from print to digital and compares the book industry with the music and film industries. It offers some interesting thoughts.

A new Road Trip from Hell -- Michael Moore is right!

I survived the trip back from DC. Now I am dealing with the paperwork which piled up in my absence. Among them a doctor's bill.

Yesterday I saw the movie Sicko which is Michael Moore's latest. It is a scathing indictment of the political establishment, the pharmaceutical industry, the health care industry, but mostly of the health insurance industry.

Today, I had such a run in. First, it is nearly an act of God to talk to a person, and that after punching in series of numbers including your "ID." (Of course this is not a number which you can find on any document from the company!) Then when you finally get a real person you have to tell them all the very same information which you have just punched into the phone seventy-two times.

I was calling because the doctors office had billed for two things. One of which (because I have an HRA to cover the deductible), I have a check for, and have been waiting for a bill from the doctor's office for several months.

The second item I had asked about in May (for service provided in February), and was told then that everything had been paid directly. The doctor's office, of course, said that they billed because the insurance company had refused to pay.

The insurance company says something like "the procedure was not appropriate for the diagnosis." Of course, it was some clerk saying this about a test that a Medical Doctor had ordered. Probably what happened....somebody used the wrong code, most likely because this insurance company is in a different region than the doctor.

Ugh. I hate this. Michael Moore was right!!!