Corinne Calvet

            On Friday morning I memorized the sixth verse of “C’est le Bebop” by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the fourth verse of “Glass securit” (Security Glass) by Serge Gainsbourg and continued to work on revising my translation. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the last of four sessions. 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning in two weeks. 

            I re-read most of Paul Acker’s “Horror and the Maternal in Beowulf” just in case the professor would want me to wing it and do my presentation on that topic. I printed my critical summary after the printer jammed on the first attempt. I left for class at 12:06. 

            Professor Balot was sitting on a bench on the main floor when I arrived, looking bored. We said “Hi” and then I went upstairs. Maybe I should have stopped to chat. 

            We began with an opening dialogue between James and Allyssa. Alex was scheduled to be part of it but James said she dropped the course. 

            I suggested that Beowulf in claiming Grendel's mother's sword is removing a female’s perceived false phallic challenge of masculine dominance. 

            I mentioned that Grendel is said to have a glove. 

            Wergild pay: Hrothgar recalls the story of how Ektheow (Beowulf's father) once came to him for help, for he had slain Heaðolaf, a man from another tribe called the Wulfings, and either could not pay the wergild or they refused to accept it. Hrothgar had married Wealhtheow, who probably belonged to the Wulfing tribe, and was able to use his kinship ties to persuade the Wulfings to accept the wergild and end the feud. Hrothgar sees Beowulf's offer of help as a son's gratitude for what he had done for Beowulf's father. 

            Abjection is the state of being cast off and separated from norms and rules, especially on the scale of society and morality. The abject threatens society. Grendel’s mother is more than abject. She is described with masculine pronouns after she attacks. 

            I found a Jstor article on Grendel’s Glove. It said the reference was on line 2076. It doesn’t quite begin there. On line 2085 of Beowulf in the Broadview Anthology of British Literature it reads: “A glove hung huge, grotesque, fast with cunning clasps; it was all embroidered with evil skill, with the devil’s craft and dragons’ skins.” Then in the editor’s note it reads: “This kind of glove or pouch is characteristic of a troll in Norse legend. In any case it does not figure in the narrator’s own description of Grendel’s attack, and is but one of the discrepancies between the two tellings of the story. Is Beowulf embellishing his tale? Or do such inconsistencies matter in a story like this?” 

           I was asked to do my presentation and I told Professor Balot that I’d screwed up and had written about something other than Acker’s essay. I told her I had read it three times and would wing it if she wanted and she told me to go ahead. 

            Acker first talks about how in Tolkien’s analysis of Beowulf he unjustifiably ignores Grendel’s mother. Then Acker talks about the idea that maternal revenge was seen as more horrific than men’s revenge because it is outside of the social norm. He cites Norse stories in which women were shown to play the role of inciters of revenge while men were the revengers. I that that was probably more practical than social since the kind of revenge a Viking would enact would usually be more effectively done by a male warrior. He then equates the fearsomeness of a female animal defending her young with the horror of a woman’s vengeance. I said I don’t think vengeance and defensiveness are comparable. I said that I find it odd to say that Grendel’s mother’s vengeance behaviour is particularly monstrous because of her gender. I think that makes her far more relatable than Grendel because his motives are harder to discern and therefore he comes across as more monstrous until one does close reading to figure out why he is attacking. 

            Nina pointed out that the names of the boys Gren and Dill in The Mere Wife complete the name Grendel. 

            Professor Balot mentioned The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. It’s about the difference in the strictness of child rearing techniques between Chinese and western mothers. 

            I mentioned that the collective voice of the matriarchs is frightening but the professor and Alyssa both said they liked them. 

            I chatted with Professor Balot at the end of class and she asked about where I am in relation to graduation. I told her this is my last undergraduate course and that I’ve applied for the MA in Creative Writing. I said they only take seven students and that my two letter writers have opposite views about my chances. Albert Moritz says the decision process is extremely arbitrary and I have a slim chance. George Elliot Clarke says I have a very good chance. I told her I don’t really care because I’ve got lots of stuff to do anyway even if I don’t get accepted. 

            I stopped at Freshco on the way home where I bought one bag of red grapes, four bags of green grapes, a pack of blueberries, a pack of blackberries, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a rack of pork back ribs, a box of spoon sized shredded wheat, a pack of Full City Dark coffee, two boxes of Triscuits, a jar of Basilica sauce, a jar of salsa, a bottle of olive oil, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. 

            I weighed 84.3 kilos before a late lunch at 16:38. That’s lighter than last Friday. 

            I took a siesta until 18:30. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos at 18:45. 

            I worked on my lecture notes and forgot to put my four chicken legs in the oven until 19:45. That meant I would be having dinner an hour later than usual. 

            At 21:30 I had a chicken leg with a potato and gravy while watching season 1, episode 5 of Burke’s Law. 

            Burke is having fried chicken and champagne with his girlfriend at a drive in theatre when someone hits his Rolls Royce. The driver is a sophisticated and beautiful woman from France named, “Francesca Bel Ami”. They exchange information and then Burke gets a call about a homicide. Famous novelist Julian Buck has died but then it is learned that it was a heart attack. Buck’s publisher Littlefield comes to see Burke because he wants access to his house so he can retrieve his manuscripts. Burke gets Buck’s autopsy and finds he was strangled. Burke orders Buck’s funeral to be filmed. Later they watch the footage and several well known public figures are suspects. One of the faces turns out to be that of Francesca. Burke goes to see her and finds she and Buck had been lovers but she didn’t like him. Burke makes a dinner date with her. Another person at the funeral was Professor Thomas Marton. Burke and Tim go to see him. Tim notices a Mignon Lebrun painting on the wall and asks if it’s original. He says it is. Tim wonders how he could afford it with a professor’s salary and Marton says it cost him nothing because Mignon Lebrun was his mother. They go to Buck’s house to find it’s been trashed. They go to see Kid Corey, a boxing trainer who was also at the funeral. He says he killed a man in Paris and Buck helped him out. He also says he had a girlfriend there named Francesca. They go to see Margaret Cowls who was also at the funeral. She’s on the patio of her mansion but she’s also chained there. She wants them to free her. But then the nurse comes and explains that the restraints are part of Margaret’s own efforts to kick alcohol. Les says they arrested a man named Charlie Hill for dancing on Buck’s grave. Charlie is a bartender who pours two drinks for every drink that’s ordered and drinks the other one. He complains about customers mixing his drinks. Charlie says he and Buck had an agreement that whichever one of them died first the other would dance on his grave. Charlie says that Francesca was his girlfriend and not Corey’s. Charlie has Buck’s manuscript behind the bar. The book tells how Littlefield was a traitor to the US. He admits that he came to kill Buck but when he arrived he was already dead. Tim figures the professor is Buck’s son and he tells Charlie. Charlie happens to have Buck’s will behind the bar. Tim shows it to Marton, who is shocked that Buck left everything to him. But it’s too late now because Marton killed Buck. Marton knocks Tim out. Meanwhile Burke is with Francesca and tells her he knows she killed Buck because he dumped her for another woman. She made Marton fall for her and then convinced him to kill Buck. 

            Francesca was played by Corinne Calvet, whose parents were the inventors of Pyrex. She first studied Criminal law at the Sorbonne and became friends with Jean Paul Sartre and Jean Cocteau. Then she became a high end interior decorator. After that she studied at the L’École du Cinema and began working on stage and on the radio. Her first film appearance was an uncredited part in Blind Desire. She co-starred in Last Chance Castle. She was discovered by a Hollywood producer and brought to Hollywood in 1947. Her first Hollywood movie put her in the role of a nightclub singer in Rope of Sand in 1949. She co-starred in On the Riviera (for which she won a Roscoe for worst performance), My Friend Irma Goes West, Quebec, Peking Express, Sailor Beware, What Price Glory, Thunder in the East, Powder River, Flight to Tangier, The Far Country, and When Willie Comes Marching Home. She also became a nightclub singer. She apparently sued Zsa Zsa Gabor for saying that her French background was fake, but it was really her feud with Zsa Zsa that was fabricated. One of her boyfriends sued her and claimed she’d used voodoo on him. She moved back to Paris and co-starred in One Step to Eternity, Sins of Casanova, and Bluebeard’s Ten Honeymoons. She wrote her memoire, Has Corinne Been a Good Girl? And published it in 1983. She then became a hypnotherapist specializing in past life regression and settled in California.