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WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Reinaldo Arenas THURS: A Writer's Wit | James Purdy FRI: My Book World | Herman Melville, Typee
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MY BOOK WORLD Sedivy, Julie. Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love. New York: Farrar, 2024. This book, I believe, was “briefly noted” in the New Yorker, and I found it just as fascinating as the review. Sedivy artfully threads together a memoir of her linguistic life, her scientific studies, and how linguistics speaks to cultures worldwide. Sedivy starts off by telling us of her childhood, where she first learns to speak Hungarian. As her family moves around, finally to the USA, she learns Italian, German, and English. She not only shares with us what she knows about spoken/written language but also that there exist over 300 sign languages in the world. She addresses how loss or reduction of hearing affects our linguistic abilities, and in the last chapter the deaths in her life. She and her brother’s best friend Oliver spend the brother’s last seven days on earth with him, sharing stories and jokes. What has this to do with linguistics? Sedivy tells us: I have this moment into which my brother’s life is compressed, this moment of him and Oliver passing the world “love” back and forth between them, until there is nothing more to be said and Vac steers his small boat into the great silence” (275). Up Next:
TUES JUL 15: A Writer's Wit | Iris Murdoch WEDS JUL 16: A Writer's Wit | Reinaldo Arenas THURS JUL 17: A Writer's Wit | James Purdy FRI JUL 18: My Book World | Herman Melville, Typee
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FRI: My Book World | Julie Sedivy, Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love TUES: A Writer's Wit | Liza Mundy WEDS: A Writer's Wit | David Hockney THURS: A Writer's Wit | Karen Russell
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THURS: A Writer's Wit | Charlotte Perkins Gilman FRI: My Book World | Julie Sedivy, Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love
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WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Donald Windham THURS: A Writer's Wit | Charlotte Perkins Gilman FRI: My Book World | Julie Sedivy, Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love Recently, the International Cultural Center at Texas Tech University kicked off a photography show featuring shots from around the world—taken mostly by TTU students and Lubbock residents. I was fortunate enough to have two photos accepted into this show and present them below. If you wish to see them in the context of the entire show, click here for a link. (1) Swiss Guard at Vatican City On a 2014 trip to Rome, Italy, I snapped this young man. He is part of the Swiss Guard, working on behalf of the Vatican to keep its people safe. The shape and colors of the uniform are unique and caught my eye. (2) Tie Shop, Milan, Italy During this 2014 stop in Milan, Italy, I was intrigued by the simple colors of this display of men's ties. The tie shop was located inside the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II (mall) near the Duomo di Milano (cathedral).
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Blake Bailey
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Donald Windham THURS: A Writer's Wit | Charlotte Perkins Gilman FRI: My Book World | Julie Sedivy, Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love
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FRI: My Book World | TBD TUES: A Writer's Wit | Blake Bailey WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Donald Windham THURS: A Writer's Wit | Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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THURS: A Writer's Wit | Pearl S. Buck FRI: My Book World | TBD
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WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anthony Bourdain THURS: A Writer's Wit | Pearl S. Buck FRI: My Book World | TBD
MY BOOK WORLD Klein, Ezra and Derek Thompson. Abundance. New York: Simon, 2025.
If you’ve ever listened to Klein’s podcast via the Times, you know how bright and articulate he is, how in-depth he explores an issue. In the introduction he and Thompson state up front: “This book is dedicated to a simple idea: to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need” (4). So much of what they say is important that I find myself underlining far more than I usually do in a book these days, but I find this statement moving: “Over the course of the twentieth century, America developed a right that fought the government and a left that hobbled it. Debates over the size of government obscured the diminishing capacity of government. An abundance of consumer goods distracted us from a scarcity of homes and energy and infrastructure and scientific breakthroughs. A counterforce is emerging, but it is young yet” (5). The authors focus on both the right and the left, making the problems discussed more universal, less partisan in nature. The authors use California as an example. The state has for years attempted to build a high-speed railroad between LA and SF. After receiving billions of dollars, it is still not done. In fact, in most aspects, it has never begun. Too many state regulations and laws that must be overcome, just to mention one aspect. That is the problem with the left: too many restrictions originally meant to protect land and other values. The right is just the opposite. They want restrictions lifted so they may have the freedom to do what they wish, all the time, full stop—regardless of the outcomes. So much more I could cite, but I’ll end with this statement concerning energy and how it affects our conception of abundance: “The stocks of fossil fuels are finite and their continued combustion is lethal. This would be true even if climate change was a hoax. Air pollution kills between 7 million and 9 million people each year; that is six or seven times the death toll from traffic accidents and hundreds of times the death toll from war or terrorism or all natural disasters combined. It is deadliest where people cook by burning wood or charcoal and farm by burning the end of the last season’s crops. That is to say, it is deadliest where people are energy poor, because where people are energy poor, they burn fuel and breathe in the byproducts” (63). This book is one of the most refreshing, stimulating, and informative that I have read in a long time. Buy a copy, read it, and then send copies to your family and friends. It deserves to be widely read. Up Next: TUES: A Writer's Wit | Jandy Nelson WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anthony Bourdain THURS: A Writer's Wit | Pearl S. Buck FRI: My Book World | TBD
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FRI: My Book World | Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance TUES: A Writer's Wit | Jandy Nelson WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anthony Bourdain THURS: A Writer's Wit | Pearl S. Buck
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THURS: A Writer's Wit | Salman Rushdie FRI: My Book World | Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance
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WEDS: A Writer's Wit |Sylvia Field Porter THURS: A Writer's Wit | Salman Rushdie FRI: My Book World | Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance
MY BOOK WORLD Groff, Lauren. Florida. New York: Random, 2018.
As I begin reading this collection of stories, I am doubtful that the author can convince me to like Florida any more than I already do (which isn’t much). Most of my life it has been a way station—to the Bahamas, to Europe, but not a destination of its own—except for two different trips to Key West which actually were delightful. Ms. Groff, however, takes readers into a Florida of gators, snakes, insects, and heat, relentless heat and humidity. But also a place of wild human animals. There is Jude, “born in a Cracker-style house at the edge of a swamp that boiled with unnamed species of reptiles” (15). There is an older sister who thinks “an island is never really quiet. Even without the storm, there were waves and wind and air conditioners and generators and animals moving out there in the dark” (44). On a stormy night, a woman’s young sons “told me about the World Pool, in which one current goes one way, another goes another way, and where they meet they make a tornado of air, which stretches, said my little one, from the midnight zone, where the fish are blind, all the way up up up to the birds” (77). One narrative titled “Snake Stories” reads like this: “Walk outside in Florida, and a snake will be watching you: snakes in mulch, snakes in scrub, snakes waiting from the lawn for you to leave the pool so they can drown themselves in it, snakes gazing at your mousy ankle and wondering what it would feel like to sink their fangs in deep” (204). Groff is unafraid to tell readers about human snakes, as well: ne’er do well fathers, skanky women, mean children, perhaps all made malicious by the climate: hot and humid twenty-four/seven. Yet, as Florida’s large population must attest to, there has to be something wonderful about the place: tempting seafood, cool breezes off the water, mild winters, and empathic people here and there who stop to help someone in trouble. Up Next: TUES: A Writer's Wit | Carol Anderson WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Sylvia Field Porter THURS: A Writer's Wit | Salman Rushdie FRI: My Book World | Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson, Abundance
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FRI: My Book World | Lauren Groff, Florida TUES: A Writer's Wit | Carol Anderson WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Sylvia Field Porter THURS: A Writer's Wit | Salman Rushdie
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THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Frank FRI: My Book World | Lauren Groff, Florida
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WEDS: A Writer's Wit |Yasunari Kawabata THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Frank FRI: My Book World | Lauren Groff, Florida
MY BOOK WORLD Stadler, Matthew. Allan Stein: A Novel. New York: Grove, 1999.
Since I read this novel the first time, I’ve also read Stadler’s The Sex Offender, and in some ways they deal with the same subject matter. Both books concern youngish male school teachers who are disgraced by having affairs with (underage) male pupils of theirs. Both books have the filthy protagonist flee to Europe or a European-like country (Sex Offender). In both books the older male finds a new young protégé over which to make a fool of himself. Stadler approaches this subject in both cases without judgment (except the judgment the protagonist bears against himself) and with great sensitivity. In Allan Stein, in order to take flight from his recent fling and disgrace, a young gay American travels to Paris assuming the name of a friend who wishes for him to do some business research on his behalf (he can “vacation” while “Herbert” is gone and also deduct the travel expense for his business). The “new” Herbert is to stay with long-distance friends who’ve never actually met the real Herbert. And . . . they happen to have a fifteen-year-old son who seems very seducible, and Herbert spends a great deal of time attempting to do just that. The real beauty of the novel (otherwise it might just be a salacious story) is the parallel pursuit he makes: 1) To locate some drawings of Allan Stein (Gertrude Stein’s nephew) on behalf of the real Herbert, an art dealer. 2) To try to gain the confidence of his host’s son, Stéphane. Does “Herbert” indeed seduce the winsome Stéphane? I’m not at liberty to say, but the ending in any case is a satisfying one. Up Next: TUES: A Writer's Wit | Gina Gershon WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Yasunari Kawabata THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Frank FRI: My Book World | Lauren Groff, Florida [Stories]
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FRI: My Book World | Matthew Stadler, Allan Stein: A Novel TUES: A Writer's Wit | Gina Gershon WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Yasunari Kawabata THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Frank
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THURS: A Writer's Wit | Bill Moyers FRI: My Book World | Matthew Stadler, Allen Stein: A Novel
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MY BOOK WORLD Lethem, Jonathan. The Feral Detective. New York: HarperCollins, 2018.
Manhattanite Phoebe Siegler agrees to help find the missing daughter of friend. Arabella, being a freshman at Reed College on the west coast, has been missing for three months but now may be in southern California. Phoebe hires Charles Heist whom she right away calls the feral detective, mainly because he himself seems wild, part of the high desert milieu of Joshua Tree environs. His “profession,” if one wants to call it that, is to find missing children and youth, and Phoebe not only interests him in the case but in having rather bumbling sex with her as well. This book reads quickly mainly because many chapters are only a paragraph or a page long. Seems a waste of the publisher’s paper supply to leave entire pages blank. But anyway . . . Phoebe and Charles embark on a trip into the mountains in which they are indeed successful in locating Arabella and secreting her out of the community of Rabbits (women hippies) and Bears (not-gay hairy men) who seem to run roughshod over this desert-mountainous area. Phoebe escorts Arabella back to New York and her mother via commercial flight, but Phoebe now seems to become the feral detective because Charles is “lost,” and she must find him. His rescue is a wild and wooly affair, but Phoebe is successful, and the denouement of this novel is a soft landing compared to where it has been. Still, an enjoyable read. Up Next: TUES: A Writer's Wit | Allen Ginsberg WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Ruth Westheimer THURS: A Writer's Wit | Bill Moyers FRI: My Book World | Matthew Stadler, Allan Stein: A Novel
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FRI: My Book World | Jonathan Lethem, The Feral Detective TUES: A Writer's Wit | Allen Ginsberg WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Ruth Westheimer THURS: A Writer's Wit | Bill Moyers
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THURS: A Writer's Wit | John F. Kennedy FRI: My Book World | Jonathan, The Feral Detective |
AUTHOR
Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA. See my profile at Author Central:
http://amazon.com/author/rjespers Archives
July 2025
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