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Lincoln: From Coast to Coast

1/28/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.
​Colette
Author of Claudine in Paris
​Born January 28, 1873
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Colette

My Book World

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Towles, Amor. The Lincoln Highway: a Novel. New York: Viking, 2021.

​This charming novel tells of the ten-day adventure of two brothers who head out from Kansas to California to build a new life, following the death of their father and one brother’s release from jail. Yet their plans are thwarted when two fellow inmates hide in the trunk of the warden’s car (and hop out when the warden isn’t looking). Well, from there the adventure heads east instead of west. Perhaps the most captivating character is Billy, the eight-year-old brother who is smarter than any other character in the book but also the most disarming. It is his idea to travel coast to coast from New York to California on the “historical” Lincoln Highway. And without revealing any spoilers, the two brothers do eventually get to do just that—even if that journey doesn’t begin until the very last sentence. 
 
The Lincoln Highway is just as fascinating, though in different ways, as Towles’s previous book, A Gentleman in Moscow. Towles is a master at several things, all adding up to great writing. One, is characterization. Even characters with the smallest parts are developed so that readers know who they are. Second is structure. Towles’s intricate scaffolding keeps readers informed of where they are at all times in the novel’s unraveling, without making it too simple. By using multiple points of view, by way of a character per chapter, he, at times, overlaps the portrayal of certain scenes, from two different points of view—providing readers an interesting “truth.” By the way, the ten parts begin with Part Ten and work toward Part One. All POVs are written in the third person with the exception of one, Duchess’s, which may make him the main narrator though not the central character. And third, Towles’s dialog—represented by way of em dashes instead of quotation marks—harks back to the fiction of an earlier period. I’m not sure why Towles does it, perhaps to do just that, make the early 1950s seem farther back than they really are. Are we to expect Lincoln Highway II? It wouldn’t trouble me at all.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Hilma Wolitzer's  Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket: Stories

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A Writer's Wit: Ethan Mordden

1/27/2022

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The aficionado prefers a crazy bomb to a mediocrity, because the musical as a form has such potential as entertainment that the merely adequate can fatigue the spirit while the disaster can amuse with its drastic misjudgments and desperation gambles.
​Ethan Mordden
Author of 
On Sondheim: An Opinionated Guide
Born January 27, 1947
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E. Mordden
TOMORROW: My Book World | Amor Towles's The Lincoln Highway
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A Writer's Wit: Mary Mapes Dodge

1/26/2022

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Life is a mystery as deep as ever death can be;
Yet oh, how dear it is to us, this life we live and see!
​Mary Mapes Dodge
Author of Rhymes and Jingles
Born January 26, 1831
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M. M. Dodge
FRIDAY: My Book World | Amor Towles's The Lincoln Highway
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A Writer's Wit: Somerset Maugham

1/25/2022

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We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
​Somerset Maugham
Author of Of Human Bondage
Born January 25, 1874
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S. Maugham
FRIDAY: My Book World | Amor Towles's The Lincoln Highway
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Survival Course for Actors

1/21/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
I've just always been fascinated by what our belief can do, and what happens when we misuse that.
​M. K. Hobson
Author of The Ladies and the Gentlemen
Born January 21, 1969
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M. K. Hobson

My Book World

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Fischer, Jenna. The Actor’s Life: A Survival Guide. With a foreword by Steve Carell. Dallas: BenBella, 2017.

I’m not an actor, but I imitated one in my youth, playing a duke in third grade, singing in a high school production of Damn Yankees, and marching down the aisle in college as part of the forest ranger chorus in Little Mary Sunshine. I loved Fischer's book because during the time it took me to read it, I realized I probably didn’t have what it would have taken to become an actor. At the same time, if I had attempted such a thing, I would so have used a book like this one as a guide.

Fischer addresses all the nuts and bolts of starting out: getting head shots done (professional ones, not phone pics), building a resumé, auditioning, even the machinations of how things work on a television or film set. Most of all, Fischer lets readers in on a little secret. Although the money can be great, the real joy of an actor’s life is ACTING. Becoming a person other than yourself. Developing a feel for all of humanity by taking on various roles. I would add that acting may be the most difficult of all the fine arts: memorizing lines (sometimes in a very short timeframe), bringing those lines to life in conjunction with a script and the ensemble, becoming (insofar as possible) that other person, taking direction, leaving your ego at the door, learning ancillary skills like singing, dancing, or fencing. If you wouldn’t do it for free (and millions of actors do), then you probably wouldn’t do it well in order to make a living.

Fisher doesn’t rely on her experiences alone; she peppers the pages with sidebars of advice from other actors: “I vowed I would never do a commercial, nor would I do a soap opera—both of which I did as soon as I left the Acting Company and was starving” (52).—Kevin Kline. And in the last section of the book, Fischer cites her interviews with four working actors, and they give, at length, their take on the profession by way of sharing with readers many more good tips. A must-read for aspiring actors and people who love Jenna Fischer (and I do) alike!

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Amor Towles's  The Lincoln Highway: a Novel

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A Writer's Wit: Johannes V. Jensen

1/20/2022

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The grounding in natural sciences which I obtained in the course of my medical studies, including preliminary examinations in botany, zoology, physics, and chemistry, was to become decisive in determining the trend of my literary work.
Johannes V. Jensen
Author of The Long Journey
Born January 20, 1873
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J. V. Jensen
TOMORROW: My Book World | Jenna Fisher's The Actor's Life
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A Writer's Wit: Patricia Highsmith

1/19/2022

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For neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done or not.
​Patricia Highsmith
Author of The Talented Mr. Ripley
Born January 19, 1921
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P. Highsmith
FRIDAY: My Book World | Jenna Fischer's The Actor's Life
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A Writer's Wit: Robert Anton Wilson

1/18/2022

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Humans live through their myths and only endure their realities.
​Robert Anton Wilson
Author of Quantum Psychology
Born January 18, 1932
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R. A. Wilson
FRIDAY: My Book World | Jenna Fischer's The Actor's Life
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Whom Do You Trust?

1/14/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
People don't choose their careers; they are engulfed by them. 
​John Dos Passos
Author of U.S.A. Trilogy
Born January 14, 1896
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J. Dos Passos

My Book World

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Choi, Susan. Trust Exercise: A Novel. New York: Holt, 2019.

Boy! (or Girl!), what a ride this read is. Metafiction perhaps at its most confounding, at least for this reader. The first third of the novel seems to be a traditional high school love story gone awry, both David and Sarah soured on, yet still stuck on each other—set in a nontraditional performing arts high school. The setting is all important, as these kids are smart and are striving to become great actors—and are easily manipulated by adults they admire or wish to please. As near as I can tell, the story is set in a city like Houston (imagine primeval swamp with skyscrapers), though the name is never spelled out. Next third of the book changes to the voice of another young woman at that high school, Karen, a superficial friend to Sarah. The author does an odd thing whereby Karen sometimes speaks in first person, and sometimes talks about herself in the third person. Must be a good reason for this. Perhaps Choi is portraying the fracturing of this (by now) woman’s personality. In the third part, readers begin to realize something is off. The story strand they’ve been holding onto is no longer there. It turns out the first third of the book is really “fiction” that “Karen” has written about some real people whom readers now get to become acquainted with in the last third. To say more would create a spoiler, and I’m not going there. While there is much to admire about this award-winning book—its structure and its strong characterizations—it left me wondering if Choi was intent on entertaining herself or her readers. You be the judge.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Jenna Fischer's  The Actor’s Life: A Survival Guide

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A Writer's Wit: Masha Gessen

1/13/2022

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Lying is the message. It’s not just that both Putin and Trump lie, it is that they lie in the same way and for the same purpose: blatantly, to assert power over truth itself. [Atlantic Monthly, March 2017, 58.]
​Masha Gessen
Author of Surviving Autocracy
Born January 13, 1967
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M. Gessen
TOMORROW: My Book World | Susan Choi's Trust Exercise 
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A Writer's Wit: Jack London

1/12/2022

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If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, come cash. 
Jack London
Author of White Fang
Born January 12, 1876
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J. London
FRIDAY: My Book World | Susan Choi's Trust Exercise
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A Writer's Wit: Diana Galbaldon

1/11/2022

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I don't plot the books out ahead of time, I don't plan them. I don't begin at the beginning and end at the end. I don't work with an outline and I don't work in a straight line.
​Diana Gabaldon
Author of Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone
Born January 11, 1952
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D. Gabaldon
FRIDAY: My Book World | Susan Choi's Trust Exercise
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One's Alma Mater in Literature

1/7/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings.
​Gerald Durrell
Author of My Family and Other Animals
Born January 7, 1925
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G. Durrell

My Book World

McCarter, Margaret Hill. A Master’s Degree. With illustrations in color by W. D. Goldbeck. Chicago: McClurg, 1913.

I read this book for two reasons. One, the novel is set in a place modeled after my alma mater, Southwestern College, in Winfield, Kansas. And two, I happened to have a copy I inherited from my grandmother, inscribed with her name and the date, “1915.” Some familiar spots on the landscape do appear in the book: the large “S” of sizable stones that must be whitewashed each year, the Walnut River Valley, Sunrise College substituting for my SC, the actual sunset hill of one hundred feet above ground. Otherwise, the novel is an overly sentimental rendering of one young man’s four years in college. The book is marred by the details McCarter leaves out: how many steps down Sunset hill to the bottom (77), how classes were conducted, where and how students lived, the topography to a greater degree (she does great watercolor washes describing spectacular sunsets). I did, however, get a feel for a certain type of student that both schools, fictional and real, seem to attract: a rough cut outlier, bright enough but unpolished, who arrives at commencement a much-changed person. One who will continue to grow and change throughout life.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Suson Choi's Trust Exercise
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A Writer's Wit: Wright Morris

1/6/2022

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The man who comes to writing late, but is in essence a writer, may sometimes gain as much as he has lost: his experience of life has given him a subject, he is spared the youthful writer's self-torment and soul-searching.
​Wright Morris
Author of Ceremony in Lone Tree
Born January 6, 1910
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W. Morris
TOMORROW: My Book World | Margaret Hill McCarter's  A Master’s Degree
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A Writer's Wit: Tananarive Due

1/5/2022

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I believe black characters in fiction are still revolutionary, given our long history of erasure.
​Tananarive Due
Author of My Soul to Take
Born January 5, 1966
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T. Due
FRIDAY: My Book World | Margaret Hill McCarter's  A Master’s Degree
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A Writer's Wit: Natalie Goldberg

1/4/2022

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Some people write for fifteen years with no success and then decide to quit. Don’t look for success and don’t quit. If you want writing, write under all circumstances. Success will or will not come, in this lifetime or the next. Success is none of our business. It comes from outside. Our job is to write, to not look up from our notebook and wonder how much money Norman Mailer earns.
​Natalie Goldberg
Author of Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America
Born January 4, 1948
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N. Goldberg
FRIDAY: My Book World |  Margaret Hill McCarter's  A Master’s Degree
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    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

    See my profile at Author Central:
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