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A Castle in Air, Truly

6/2/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
My thoughts went round and round and it occurred to me that if I ever wrote a novel it would be of the “stream of consciousness” type and deal with an hour in the life of a woman at the sink.
​Barbara Pym
Author of ​Quartet in Autumn
​Born June 2, 1913
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B. Pym

My Book World

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Loe, Nancy E. Hearst Castle: An Interpretive History of W. R. Hearst’s San Simeon Estate. Aramark. Santa Barbara: Companion P, 1994.

I first visited Hearst Castle, San Simeon, California, in 1978. The tour was conducted more like an informal swirl through a friend’s home. The lighting was poor, and items seemed casually thrown together. The second time I visited the park, in 1997, it had been acquired by the state of California and a visit to the new museum was divided into separate tours. My partner and I were so fascinated that we took all four, two in the morning and two in the afternoon. We became so well acquainted with the docent that we later had drinks . . . that is not true . . . I wish. He was a handsome blond man. Anyway, by that time, the entire property had been curated and updated so that it looked more as it would have in its heyday, the 1920s and 1930s.
 
Loe’s book, which I bought on that latter trip, has remained on my shelf until now, but it is no less interesting. The content is as much about the original owner, William Randolph Hearst, newspaper magnate, and his architect partner, the renowned Julia Morgan, as it is about the property itself. In fact, the book seems more about Morgan, an early feminist and a rare woman architect at that time. Hearst may have liked her in part because she was able to create almost every feature he wanted, even if it meant destroying a newly built basement wall to widen his bowling alley to three lanes from two—a whimsy that he scarcely utilized in his lifetime. But he also respected Morgan’s opinion and taste, because she was usually correct in her judgment. I still find the idea fascinating that a mere mortal could make his every wish come true (except that wish to live forever). What it must do to one’s psyche to get one’s way ninety-nine percent of the time.
 
To some eyes, the castle is a mishmash (or is it now mashup?) of every major historical architectural period and every major culture in the world. To others it represents the hubris of the ultrawealthy. To me it sings of the creativity of two people rich with ideas and nearly unlimited resources. Late in life, Hearst would be forced to sell off certain assets in order to take care of his $126 million dollar debt. Now that’s living! And yet he would still hold onto his Casa Grande, as he so fondly called it, for a bit longer.
​Nice work if you can get it!

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Marian Wright Edelman

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Gwendolyn Brooks
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Frank Lloyd Wright
FRI: My Book World | Gabor and Guttenberg, 
American Carnage: Shattering the Myths That Fuel Gun Violence (School Safety, Violence in Society)

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Angels Indeed

5/26/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
It reminds me to say that staying local should never be about looking at the world through a closed window, but about making a home then throwing the doors open and inviting the world in.
​Simon Armitage, Poet
Author of ​Out of the Blue
​Born May 26, 1963
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S. Armitage

My Book World

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Johnson, Denis. Angels: A Novel. New York: HarperCollins, 2002 (1977).

I wouldn’t have thought of these words, but a blurb located on the back of the book describes the novel as being about two born losers. And I believe that is the case, unfortunately. A poor woman with two small children meets a divorced man, and they wind up in Phoenix. In the desert city, after mishaps with drugs, the woman finds herself in rehab, on the path toward a new life. The man and his two brothers, however, make a plan to rob a bank, believing their idea is brilliant. The heist, of course, goes awry, and the man winds up in prison killing someone. The account of his execution may be one of the most realistic and chilling scenes I’ve ever read in fiction. Angels makes a fine title on several levels of irony.

TUES: A Writer's Wit | Colm Tóibín
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Jane Green
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Christopher Lasch
FRI: My Book World | Nancy E. Loe, ​Hearst Castle: An Interpretive History

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Gorman Carries Weight of World

5/19/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
A man can do what is his duty; and when he says “I cannot,” he means, “I will not.”
​Johann Fichte
Author of 
Wissenschaftslehre (“Theory of Scientific Knowledge”)
​Born May 19, 1762
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J. Fichte

My Book World

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Gorman, Amanda. Call Us What We Carry: Poems. New York: Viking, 2021.

This collection of poetry may be the most innovative one I’ve ever read—quite fitting for one of our youngest and most distinguished poets. Gorman uses a wide variety of poetic forms. Concrete poetry portrays Melville’s whale, and a poem about the Covid Pandemic is a black mask with white print. She devises a series of free forms fitting the subject matter. Yet others are truly novel, for example, in “The Soldiers (or Plummer),” in which her lines representing a young soldier’s diary appear as dated diary pages. The poet seems to be telling the broad sweep of African-American history by searching out every appropriate form and by sweeping out every ignored corner of said history. One reading, as with most fine poetry, will not be enough. And I look forward to Gorman’s next collection.

TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret Wise Brown
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Elsa Maxwell
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Bennett Cerf
FRI: My Book World | Denis Johnson, ​Angels


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Irving's Last Book?

5/12/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
I was much distressed by next door people who had twin babies and played the violin; but one of the twins died, and the other has eaten the fiddle, so all is peace.
​Edward Lear, English Poet Known for His Limericks
Author of "There Was an Old Lady Whose Folly"
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​Born May 12, 1812
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E. Lear

My Book World

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Irving, John. The Last Chairlift: A Novel. New York: Simon, 2022.

I’m a big fan of most of Irving’s early and mid-career books, including his nonfiction. I loved reading Garp, Hotel New Hampshire, and A Prayer for Owen Meany. I had to begin the latter three times until it finally ensnared me and I couldn’t put it down. Perusing The Last Chairlift, sadly, is not like that.
 
I read this book aloud to my partner evenings over a period of three months. I kept waiting for Irving’s Dickensian afterburner to kick in at about page 100, that thrust that would propel us to the end. It did not engage, not for me anyway. Almost nine hundred pages seems too long for a contemporary novel, I believe. It might have been better served to come in at four or even five hundred pages. Why?
 
For one thing, there is too much of a certain kind of repetition. Normally, I like some recapitulation, little wrap-ups of or references to earlier events to remind readers what has come before. However, in this novel, Irving has an annoying habit of attaching endearing monikers like the little snowshoer to characters instead of using the character’s name (and his practice seems clunky compared to the Russians who do this rather well). Of course, he alternates their usage with their real name at times, but by the time he does, one forgets who the little snowshoer is . . . or was.
 
And did someone say ghosts? A few of the characters die along the way (the novel does cover quite a life span), but do they? They keep reappearing as ghosts, but Irving doesn’t have much of a mechanism for readers to grab onto. We’re just supposed to know it. Rather than being led to believe this is some kind of flashback, it is really encounters with ghosts we’re having. I will accept responsibility for sloppy reading, but I’m not sure it’s all my fault. Or are ghosts merely an easy, perhaps sloppy, representation of how the main character misses the people in his life who die?
 
Finally, Irving has a careerlong fascination with a number of images or motifs: bears or people in bear costumes, an almost homoerotic fascination with wrestling, and also, among others, a perhaps erotic fascination with trans people (and a son who accepts his trans mother, see The World According to Garp). This novel is populated with trans people, yet I never get the sense that Irving has a real feel or understanding of them. There is not enough information present on the page for readers to believe he knows what he’s talking about: complex physical and psychological transformations, surgical or other medical procedures, the emotional angst that must come with such metamorphoses. And always, I wonder why he avoids other LGBTIQA+ iterations, mostly the G one (except for a lesbian couple who must be the last vestige of vaudeville, appearing nightly in Two Dykes, One Who Talks, har har har). Just saying.
 
It seems that Irving may have wished for this book to be his swan song, and he puts his entire heart and snippets of every motif from his entire oeuvre and mixes them all into a fine pea soup with not a little ham. I don’t know about others, but as I finished this go-around with the latest Irving novel, I could only stomach so much of this rich pea soup. And only so much ham.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Jean Hanff Korelitz

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Robert Surtees
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Diane Duane
FRI: My Book World | Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry: Poems

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Less, More Lost Than Ever

5/5/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
On an exhausted field, only weeds grow.
​Henryk Sienkiewicz
Author of ​Quo Vadis
​Born May 5, 1846
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H. Sienkiewicz

My Book World

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Greer, Andrew Sean. Less Is Lost. New York: Little, 2022.

My only criticism of Greer’s first novel in this series, Less, was that readers had to play a guessing game as to whom the narrator was. I felt there were some problems with that mechanism (see my complete profile). Why not just write the narrative in third person? I asked at the time. Less’s lover, Freddy Pelu, could not possible know some of the things Less had experienced. At least, that is what I reasoned.
 
In this novel, Freddy Pelu is an openly open gay narrator, Less’s partner (the one he finally winds up with in the first novel). And yet, his similar narration of this novel sets up different but similarly disturbing questions: 1) Since the two men are once again separated, we don’t see them together. Less is on an extended book tour, trying to scare up extra money, Freddy off somewhere else. 2) Again, Freddy seems to be narrating Less’s story about the death of Less’s previous lover. Is he actually there to witness all of Less’s torments? 3) Why even have a partner if Less is not even going to engage with him, the least of which would be coitus?
 
Still, as a summer beach read, Greer’s mixture of apt literary allusions and familiarity with pop culture, the novel is not disappointing. It kept me reading right to the very end when Less, after crisscrossing the USA—combining literary lectures with personal journey—finally meets up with Freddy (although it is only a good guess on the part of readers). If Greer squeaks out a sequel, I do hope that, even if Freddy narrates this one, too, that readers will experience the partners being in the same room!

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Sophie Scholl

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Ariel Durant
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Benjamin Dreyer
FRI: My Book World | John Irving, The Last Chairlift


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New Thinking about Boys and Men

4/28/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
In Monroeville, well, they’re Southern people, and if they know you are working at home they think nothing of walking right in for coffee. But they wouldn't dream of interrupting you on the golf course.
​Harper Lee
Author of ​To Kill a Mockingbird
​Born April 28, 1926
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H. Lee

My Book World

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Reeves, Richard V. Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It. Washington: Brookings, 2022.

Reeves’s thesis may be that while the liberation of women in the last fifty years has been a much-needed, even transformative, change in our society, men and boys have been left behind in their liberation or growth. He believes, for example, that boys should be red-shirted, in other words, begin school a year later. Many parents already do this when they see their sons are not ready. An added benefit is that when the boys reach their teen years, they’re in a class of young women whose maturity more closely matches their own. Reeves also includes in his research how black boys and men differ yet from white males and other ethnic groups in their experiences—thus expanding his work.
 
To solve the employment problem of boys and men he advocates more sophisticated tech programs to train boys (as well as girls) for tech jobs that are sorely needed, perhaps entire high schools, not just a single department. He suggests that we as a society make it acceptable for men to train for more HEAL professions (health, education, administration, and literacy), in the same way women and girls have increased their presence in STEM professions (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). In the manner that women have made headway in achieving fifty percent occupation of STEM jobs and professions that used to be closed to women, men and boys should be encouraged and supported financially to enter HEAL professions. He cites research that suggests many boys perform better when they are tutored by male teachers.
 
There are those who will see this book as overlooking women and girls, but Reeves insists that that is not so. An apparent feminist in thought and deed (a somewhat stay-at-home-dad), he believes that progress should continue for women and girls. It’s just that he believes men, because of societal changes occurring in the last half-century, should be allowed to grow in areas that they weren’t previously. And he offers an entire chapter on how these new roles for men may be accomplished. The task will take considerable resources, both financial and human, but if we don’t begin by considering the ideas put forth by our scholars, where else can we begin, and how do we expect to progress as a civilization?

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret Hill McCarter

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Reza Aslan
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anna Olson
FRI: My Book World | Andrew Sean Greer, Less Is Lost


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Desperation Creates 'Character'

4/21/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
Research for fiction is a funny thing: you go looking for one piece of information, and find something altogether different.
​Nell Freudenberger
Author of ​Lucky Girls
​Born April 21, 1975
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N. Freudenberger

My Book World

Fox, Paula. Desperate Characters. With an introduction by Jonathan Franzen. New York: Norton, 1999 (1970).

This story is indeed one of desperation. Set in the late 1960s amid a crumbling New York City (Brooklyn), the middle-aged characters are desperate in different respects. Sophie, married to Otto, an attorney, feeds a feral cat that bites her. Otto’s longtime law partner, Charlie, leaves their firm, but he also becomes involved with Sophie unbeknownst to husband Otto. Sophie postpones having her bite checked to see if she might be the victim of rabies. After she and Otto finally trap the cat to have it examined, she and Otto travel to their country place to find that it has been ransacked and vandalized. Perhaps only a bottle of booze has been stolen, but many items, including books, are completely unusable due to the destruction. They consult with the man whom they pay to care for their property in the off season, not getting much satisfaction when he claims he and his son just checked it a few days before.

Much about this book is unsettling. People with a comfortable life are no longer comfortable with each other or their lives, yet they are loath to abandon them or do anything to change them. The cat bite seems to stand in for the unseen sore that is festering beneath the surface of their marriage. Unless I’ve missed something, we never learn the result of Sophie’s test, whether she’ll have to undergo the twelve rabies shots given to the stomach, one per day for nearly two weeks. Much in the way that we never learn what happens to these desperate people. The way the author must want it. The way many of our lives end up, with more questions posed than answered.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Edward R. Murrow

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anita Loos
THURS: A Writer's Wit | C. Day Lewis
FRI: My Book World | Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What To Do About It
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'Mysterious' Childhood

4/14/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.
​​Arnold Toynbee
Author of ​Mankind and Mother Earth
​Born April 14, 1889
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A. Toynbee

My Book World

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Heim, Scott. Mysterious Skin: A Novel. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

Among the best novels I’ve ever read concerning adult male-to-young male molestation. Heim explores the issue inside out, from all angles. The adult, like a hawk (thus, the gay slang, chickenhawk), knows its target’s weaknesses and exploits them: the child’s loneliness, his lack of parental guidance, his need for what seems to be love (though it’s only the predator’s skewed view of love), the child’s own possible homosexuality one day. But another side of it is the fact that the child may perceive he loves this man, as well, in the case of the novel, a baseball coach. One of the coach’s victims is positive the man loves him, all the favors he bestows upon him, other gifts, the apparent affection, even the $5 bill he tosses at his favored victims, already setting them up to become whores. From the beginning, the protagonist is sure he’s been abducted by aliens, and, in a sense he has. The experience of molestation must feel like an abduction—the child’s brain scrambling to make sense of this baffling situation—makes aliens from outer space seem a lot less threatening than dealing with aliens that seem to arise out of the very ground here on earth. 

​Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Susan Faludi

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Richard Hughes
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Aubrey de Grey
FRI: My Book World | Paula Fox: Desperate Characters

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Plotting Marriage

4/7/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
       The wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.
​William Wordsworth
Author of ​The Prelude
​Born April 7, 1770
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W. Wordsworth

My Book World

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Eugenides, Jeffrey. The Marriage Plot. New York: Farrar, 2011.

I loved the author’s book, Middlesex, but this novel seems to lack movement. I saw little growth in the three main characters: Madeline, Mitchell, and Leonard. At the end, in this love triangle, Madeline is still no closer to deciding what she wants in life. Perhaps that is all right; she is just out of college, just like the other two. The young man who falls in love with her, Mitchell, is a fellow college student and her best friend since childhood, but when she rejects him to marry Leonard, another student, he takes a protracted world trip with his best male friend. And when Mitchell returns, he finds Madeleine in a mess because she has married Leonard (against Mitchell’s advice) who is diagnosed bipolar, and he has freed Madeleine to divorce him after his major meltdown. Mitchell then lives with Madeleine and her family (they love him) while she recovers. The two even have sex, a meh experience for both of them. The marriage plot, alluding to the title, turns out to be a reference to an academic essay Madeleine has written, finally published by an obscure journal within the last pages of this novel. Leonard has gone to live in the Oregonian woods with a buddy. Hm. Even if “sad,” it seems the novel could have a more satisfying end. Just me, I guess.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret of Valois-
Angoulême
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Aleksandr Ostrovsky
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Eudora Welty 
FRI: My Book World | Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

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That Girl, Plural

3/31/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
How did I know I was gay? When I slept with her, I had me on my mind. When I slept with him, I had him on my mind.
​​Jon-Henri Damski
American Essayist and Columnist
​Born March 31, 1937
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J. Damski

My Book World

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Lehman, Elizabeth J. Those Girls: Single Women in Sixties and Seventies Popular Culture. Lawrence: U Press of Kansas, 2011.

Lehman centers her book around five topics: 1) how cinema treats women in the early 1960s; 2) how young women navigate leaving home in the late 1960s; 3) single women in the early 1970s sitcoms; 4) working women in 1970s action series; and last, single women dealing with sexual aggression in 1970s film. All throughout, Lehman draws from 1960s and 1970s film and television shows to explore these topics of popular culture. For example, she draws on character Mary Richards of The Mary Tyler Moore Show to demonstrate how, with careful tinkering by writers and directors, Mary walks a fine line between keeping her sex life on the down low and yet confronting her boss about why she is paid less than the man who has preceded her as producer of the news. But though the author’s analysis may seem like a TV Guide description at times, she uses television and film to demonstrate how US women transition from the world of their mothers and grandmothers to the mid-century world of marked change for the lives of women. In the latter part, she utilizes a book/film like Looking for Mr. Goodbar to explore how women seeking an active sex life messes with the heads of young men raised like their fathers, how such men can turn violent because they’re no longer in charge of such a negotiation. An interesting read for younger people to see how far (or not) American culture has advanced during the early twenty-first century.

​Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Marguerite Duras

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Charles Cumming
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Margarita Simonyan 
FRI: My Book World | Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot

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Woman of Many Mansions

3/24/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
The barb in the arrow of childhood suffering is this: its intense loneliness, its intense ignorance.
​Olive Schreiner
Author of Woman and Labour
​Born March 24, 1855
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O. Schreiner

My Book World

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Dedman, Bill and Paul Clark Newell, Junior. Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune. New York: Ballantine, 2013.

W. A. Clark builds a mining empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, leaving his heirs quite wealthy. The youngest daughter by his second wife, Huguette Clark, makes good use of her inheritance in any number of ways. She schools herself about the things she loves: Japanese art, painting, and more. Though she commits some errors, such as marrying and then having it annulled in a very short time, she is a prudent woman. She may be plagued, however, with one of the maladies of inherited wealth, which is a certain guilt at receiving so much for having done so little to “earn” it. As a result she seems quite generous with those she loves and trusts, almost to a fault. All someone must do is drop a hint about being short of money for some project or an upcoming bill, and she grabs her checkbook.

With that kind of naivete, she winds up trusting a crook as her money manager. In the end he bilks her out of millions, or attempts to. After Huguette dies at the age of 104, nineteen mostly distant relatives go to court to fight Huguette’s will, which leaves much of her money to those who have worked for her for years. But after it is all done, the judge awards most of her fortune to the nineteen relatives, many of whom never even meet the woman or haven’t seen her or tried to see her since they were children.

The main thrust of the book, in any case, is that W. A. Grant and his daughter (later) have as many as five large mansions built, and she never, except as a child, ever lives in any of them. She spends most of her adult life in a 5,000-square-foot apartment on Fifth Avenue across from New York’s Central Park. Instead of selling those mansions early on, however, she maintains each one of them, whether in Santa Barbara, California, or in the New York City area. Each one is fully staffed for many decades even though no one from the family, and Huguette in particular, ever abides in them. The strangest thing about her living situation is that some point her health becomes so bad that she must go to the hospital. Once she is there, she rather likes the company and attention she receives every day, so instead of installing a nursing staff back in her Fifth Avenue apartment, she virtually moves into Doctors’ Hospital. And there she spends much of her last twenty years of life, thus expanding the notion of empty mansions. In the end, she hasn’t lived in any of them. Her story is perhaps a cautionary tale about the hazards of inheriting a large fortune. Is it really yours? And can you ever share enough of it to assuage your guilt that you might not deserve it?

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Bennett Madison

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Lara Logan
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anna Sewell 
FRI: My Book World | 
Elizabeth J. Lehman's  Those Girls: Single Women in Sixties and Seventies Popular Culture

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Lahiri: Among the Best

3/3/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
I was raised in Catholic school where we were given a lot of heavy literature and a dense, weighty lyric wasn't strange to me.
​​Jennifer Warnes,  Songwriter
Author of "Right Time of the Night"
Born March 3, 1947
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J. Warnes

My Book World

Lahiri, Jhumpa. Unaccustomed Earth. New York: Knopf, 2008.

These are eight long stories that are reminiscent of Alice Munro’s long stories in that Lahiri seems to tell an entire lifetime in one. She neither leaves much out, nor does she include too much. Each word, each sentence, fits into each paragraph, each section, to make a complete and satisfying story. Her characters have depth, sometimes taking readers in surprising directions—in the same way that actual human beings can surprise us in our own lives. I tried to read each story in one sitting because quitting before it is done is like leaving a banquet after one or two courses. I admire her work for its craft and its deeply conveyed emotions.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Elizabeth Moon

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Jeffrey Eugenides
THURS: A Writer's Wit |Vita Sackville-West
FRI: My Book World | Randy Shilts's And the Band Played On

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Basement Living

2/24/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
My job as a human being as well as a writer is to feel as thoroughly as possible the experience that I am part of, and then press it a little further.
​​Jane Hirshfield
Author of ​Nine Gates
​Born February 24, 1953
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My Book World

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​Mosley, Walter. The Man in My Basement: A Novel. New York: Little, 2004.
 
A short but expansive novel with this premise: An odd little White man seeks out a Black man, Charles Blakey, because he has a large basement that is also windowless and contains only one door. Anniston Bennet’s proposition is this: that Charles will lock Anniston up in his basement for a certain amount of time. In return Charles will receive a large sum of money. Charles says no at first, but he reconsiders. Charles has inherited his two-hundred-year-old home, but it is his only asset. He’s never worked hard or steadily, in fact, has been fired from a bank for embezzling a small sum of money—thus being blackballed by the rest of the town. So Charles does agree to house the little man in his basement, basically serving as Bennet’s master. What follows is a much deeper story than what may think in the beginning. To say more would indeed spoil the read about how these two men come to terms with their pasts.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Tessa Hadley

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Robert Lowell
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Matt Taibbi
FRI: My Book World | Jhumpa Lahiri's ​Unaccustomed Earth

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'woman in White' Is Illusive

2/17/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
​Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.
​Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Author of The Deepening Stream
​Born February 17,  1879
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D. Canfield Fisher

My Book World

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Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. Introduction and Notes by Camille Cauti. New York: Barnes, 2005 (1861).

A gem of the nineteenth century, this Victorian novel is intricately plotted down to the last page. (Consult the Internet for the summary.) I’m glad I read it, and it is yet another I can mark off my Jane Smiley list of top one hundred novels (see her Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel). But I must say that even for someone who has much time on my hands, I couldn’t appreciate Collins’s glacial pace in developing complexity. I think we denizens of the 20th and 21st centuries have been corrupted in our ability to stay with something twice as long as many contemporary novels (clocks in at 635 pages). I shall keep trying, though. I shall keep trying.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit |
Anaïs Nin
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Christopher Bram
THURS: A Writer's Wit | W. W. B. Du Bois
FRI: My Book World | Walter Mosley's The Man in My Basement

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Price of 'Ardent Spirits'

2/10/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.
​Boris Pasternak
Author of Doctor Zhivago
Born February 10, 1890
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B. Pasternak

My Book World

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Price, Reynolds. Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back. New York: Scribner, 2009.

Seems there is always something interesting to be found in a writer’s memoirs, and Price’s is no exception. This, one of three volumes his memoirs, is an account of his years of study abroad and his first years of teaching at Duke University. Yet, of course, it also includes much else along the way: the many close friendships and collegial relationships he acquires in academia; familial relationships, tangentially at least; his desire to be and early practices of becoming a novelist; his relationships with other writers and those associated with the publishing business (some natural sort of name-dropping allowed).

And finally, he does address his homosexuality (having been born in 1933, he abhors the term “gay” and justifies his disapproval). Both in the UK and US, such sexual actions are strictly illegal, so he lives primarily a lonely life, never establishing a long-term relationship, though he does come close while in England, falling in love with a European man just prior to returning to the States to teach. Their long distance love fizzles out, but they do remain friends. Price dies in 2011, just as gay marriage is being accepted as a norm. Pity. I would love to know what his thoughts about it might have been.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Frederick Douglass

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Alfred North Whitehead
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Maureen Johnson
FRI: My Book World | Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White


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Swim | Pond | Rain

2/3/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
The greatest mistake is the trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
​Walter Bagehot
Author of ​The English Constitution
​Born February 3, 1826
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W. Bagehot

My Book World

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Saunders, George. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life. New York: Random, 2021.
 
Saunders, if this book is any representation, is a talented teacher of writing. His brilliance as a writer always intimidates me a bit; I’m not sure I understand his own fiction all that well. However, here, as he examines seven stories of Russian writers Chekhov, Gogol, Tolstoy, and Turgenev, Saunders makes very clear through illustration and fine contemplation what it means to construct a solid story. And I use that word deliberately because for Saunders writing a short story is about constructing a work of art.
 
I can’t reveal everything he covers, but I can mention several concepts that struck me as being essential. If the reader is a novice writer, you can learn much (bring your pencil). If you’ve written lots of stories, perhaps Saunders’s ideas will be a refresher course for you or bring to light elements you’ve not considered before now.
 
One, Saunders is concerned with cause and effect. Each action in a story should be the result of some other action. Why is this character doing this or that? Second, Saunders contends that escalation is paramount—what may cause one to keep reading is that the stakes go up. Each major event should, in a cause-and-effect manner, escalate the story, fire it up, move it along. Third, he makes a simple list of major events for each story, demonstrating to himself how each may lead to the next. Of course, his ideas are not all about plotting; he’s ultimately concerned with the characters and why they act the way they do so that readers may get to the human heart of the story. A must-read for fiction writers.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Peter Carey

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Elizabeth Bishop
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Brendan Behan
FRI: My Book World | 
Willa Cather's The Professor’s House

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'Shy' She Is Not

1/27/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
Curtsy while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time.
​Lewis Carroll
Author of ​Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
​Born January 27, 1832
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L. Carroll

My Book World

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Rodgers, Mary and Jesse Green. Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers. New York: Farrar, 2022.

I’ve been a huge fan of comic Carol Burnett my entire life. I remember her belting out a song called “Shy,” when she appeared in a TV version of the play, Once Upon a Mattress. By today’s standards, it was a simple production and recorded on kinescope for us now to cherish by way of YouTube. The one highlight is Burnett as the princess singing “Shy” with some irony, her mouth open wide, her lungs full of air, no microphone needed. The thing I don’t know or realize at the time is that the music is written by the author of this book, Mary Rodgers—the younger daughter of composer Richard Rodgers.
 
Mary Rodgers’s book is co-written with Jesse Green, a lifelong friend. Rodgers at one point attempts to pen the book herself, yet always gets bogged down. But you’re a storyteller, Jesse tells her, a talker! So Mary tells her stories to Jesse, and Jesse does more than write them down. He creates a great book, handing over each draft to Mary for approval, until they arrive at what is this tome.
 
The title may not be quite so ironic when applied to Mary. Although she in many ways is bold, she is always reigned in, first of all, by her parents. Her mother, probably jealous of her daughter’s talent (this learned from Mary’s many hours on analysts’ sofas), belittles her and her work. Richard Rodgers, her famous father, is also begrudging with regard to how much time he spends with his daughter. Mary Rodgers (b. 1931) is an early feminist without the crusading. She must fight her way into every project she obtains until she reaches a certain point (probably when Mattress becomes a huge hit). Even after that, she doesn’t always get the big projects. Her fame comes more or less from writing projects for children.
 
In fact, she must love children a great deal, giving birth to six of her own (three each by two different husbands), one dying quite young. Her legacy, as she tells it, may to be a better parent than composer. She tries, in vain sometimes, to be a better mother than her own mother was. Ultimately she realizes she may not be able to have it all, as more recent feminists realize. At least not without a lot of help, women can’t have it all. (We’re talking the hiring of tutors, governesses, child caregivers, not to mention lots of domestic help—something available only to the wealthy.) At any rate, this memoir is enjoyable to read on many levels. Not always the greatest prose (transcription of an oral work seems to miss out on the finishing touches that grammar and phrasing can give it), with perhaps far too many footnotes that could have been incorporated into the main text, this memoir is still a pleasant and entertaining read.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Laura Lippman

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Muriel Spark
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Havelock Ellis
FRI: My Book World | George Saunders: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain


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Krouse Tells 'Everything' and More

1/20/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
Free societies are societies in which the right of dissent is protected.
​Natan Sharansky
Author of 
Never Alone: Prison, Politics, and My People
​Born January 20, 1948
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N. Sharansky

My Book World

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Krouse, Erika. Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation. New York: Flatiron, 2022.

Krouse, a fine novelist and short story writer (I became acquainted with her work in The New Yorker), turns to nonfiction in this book. She lives in Colorado where she secures a job as a private investigator for an attorney who is attempting to litigate against the town’s university (you don’t have to comb your memory for long to realize she’s talking about the University of Colorado). In her developing career—she informs her boss during her interview that she is not a PI—she learns to interview victims of sexual violence at the hands of the university’s potential recruits, contemporary football players, and coaching staff (at least by way of their complicity). It is a case that continues for six years until it is “resolved” (you’ll have to read the book to see what that means). 
 
Throughout this narrative, Krouse weaves in her own story of sexual abuse. Seems as a child, the man living with her mother, known to readers as X, begins abusing her at age four and continues for a number of years. This abuse colors all her relationships, of course, with both men and women. At a certain age, she refuses to be in the same room with X, a stance her mother does not approve. In fact, at one point, her mother “disowns” her for a fairly flimsy excuse concerning Krouse’s wedding details. Oh, and into the narrative is also woven her relationship with a sensitive guy, who turns out to be the man she marries. Krouse must learn to live without her biological family (her brother the only one who deigns to speak to her, usually on the down low), and so she forms a new one with her husband and a number of other close friends.
 
The case? The university sustains huge losses because of the scandal, and many people at the top are let go, very gingerly, because the university doesn’t need any more litigation or loss of income. For example, the head football coach is fired, but the university must pay out his contract for several million. Erika Krouse continues to work for the attorney, but the cases seem like light-lifting compared to the sexual assault case. She enjoys having acquired the skills she has learned: research, interviewing, counseling (insomuch as she can) to win over informants and witnesses. A very fine book about a horrible subject, one our society has yet to deal with in a uniform fashion. Women and girls deserve NOT to be assaulted in any manner by any male. Period.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Vicki Baum

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Somerset Maugham
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Mary Mapes Dodge
FRI: My Book World | Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers

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'Evidence of Love': An Old Story

1/13/2023

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 A WRITER'S WIT
If you record the world honestly, there's no way people can stop being funny. A lot of fiction writing doesn't get that idea, as if to acknowledge it would trivialize the story or trivialize human nature, when in fact human nature is reduced and falsified if the comic aspects are not included.
​Lorrie Moore
Author of ​Anagrams
​Born January 13, 1957
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L. Moore

My Book World

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Bloom, John and Jim Atkinson. Evidence of Love. Austin: Texas Monthly, 1983.

This true-crime book holds a particular interest for me because I attended college with the two principals, Betty Pomeroy Gore and Allan Gore. I stood next to Allan in the a cappella choir, and Betty was born and raised in the small Kansas town where my grandparents lived. Betty and Allan married five months before my fiancée and I did, so I have some affinity for their story. On June 13, 1980, when we are all in our early thirties, Betty Gore is murdered apparently with a three-foot ax. The last person to see her alive, other than her infant daughter, is her friend Candy Montgomery. Only they aren’t exactly friends any longer. According to trial records, when Candy drops by to see about the Gore’s older daughter spending the night at the Montgomery house and picking up the child’s swimsuit, Betty asks Candy if she is having an affair with her husband, Allan. Candy says no, but when Betty asks her if she had an affair with him, Candy confirms it.
 
The word “yes” begins their long and bizarre story. The two women talk quietly about it, Candy proclaiming that the affair has been over for eight months. This does not satisfy Betty. She leaves the room and comes back from the utility room with a big ax. Somehow the following fracas winds up in that little room. Candy claims that Betty says, “I have to kill you,” and raises the ax. Candy’s head and foot both receive “minor” injuries, but worse, something in Candy’s subconsciousness is unleashed, a rage, and, instead of getting out of that place with her life, she finds herself in a life-and-death struggle for the ax. And when she wrangles it away, she (in echoes of Lizzie Borden) gives her friend over forty whacks—most of them while the victim’s heart is still beating.
 
The story is fascinating, not just because I knew the Gores on a degree of separation of, say, a faded one, but it is universal to many fallen church people. All these people are good Christians, active in their local communities, and still something heinous like this can happen. After evading the police for weeks, Candy is finally confronted and charged with the murder. Her trial, in North Texas’s Collin County adjacent to Dallas, is a circus of media hounds, theatrical lawyers, and one recalcitrant and tyrannical judge.
 
By the way, I read this book the first time it came out. Made not a mark in it. Just read it straight through to get the facts, ma’am, just the facts. This reading, I believe I felt a much stronger empathy for young parents who are dissatisfied with their apparently happy marriages, a better understanding that life is not always black and white. Though the story is over forty years old, it remains a cautionary tale for bored suburban housewives who think that a brief affair might bring them a bit of excitement to their dull lives. And perhaps it is a lesson already learned, for more women than ever are a part of the workforce, lead mostly satisfying lives of work and family—as much as any man. In any case, it is a story I shall not soon forget.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | 
David Ebershoff 
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Binyavanga Wainaina
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Patricia Highsmith
FRI: My Book World | Erika Krouse's Tell Me Everything

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Mother and Daughter: Oil and Water

1/6/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
I do a tremendous amount of rewriting. I just obsessively rewrite. Although sometimes there are sections, sometimes you're just lucky and a paragraph will just kind of come out. And that's great. But that's not ordinary in a day's work.
​Elizabeth Strout
Author of Amy and Isabelle
​Born January 6, 1956
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E. Strout

My Book World

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Strout, Elizabeth. Amy and Isabelle. New York: Vintage, 1998.

I regret that this, Strout’s first book, is my most recent one read, after having perused five other Strout books previously. The novel is indeed a tour de force, worthy of premiering a writing career. In it Strout tells the story of titular characters Amy and Isabelle, daughter and mother respectively. It is one of the hottest summers on record in Shirley Falls, a New England town in the 1970s. The site’s yellowing river exudes a strong Sulphur smell. No one has air conditioning, and everyone is hot all the time, in every dwelling whether it is at home or at work. Years before Isabelle has come to Shirley Falls with a baby in her arms. Her husband has died, she tells everyone. Now Amy is seventeen, and her mother is youngish, in her thirties.

Readers in essence become acquainted with the entire town. All of Isabelle’s co-workers in an office where she is the boss’s secretary: Fat Bev and a number of other notable characters. There are Amy’s school friends, particularly Stacy, who is pregnant, and, being the daughter of two mental health workers, is allowed to have her baby and give it up for adoption. The two friends share lunch each day sitting in the nearby woods and smoking a single cigarette each (Stacy hides them in a Tampon carrier kept in her school bag). They are close, yet there are secrets about themselves they never reveal to the other, things that might make one dislike the other (each fears). There is Amy’s middle-aged math teacher, a bearded man, not particularly handsome, but charismatic enough to lure Amy into an illicit relationship. There is the disappearance of a girl about the girls’ age from another town, a story that sends shivers up and down the backs of everyone in Shirley Falls. All of these people have ordinary but messy lives, even though the town is beset with an active church life divided among a number of denominations. Even so, an undercurrent of unease, perhaps some might say evil, brings all these souls together in a manner that keeps one reading as fast as one can.

But one should not read too fast, because by doing so one can buzz by the small and delicious details that Strout plants along the way. Pregnant teenage girl. Middle-age man lovingly seducing his pupil. An ambitious mother with a dark past of her own. Oh, and several adulterous affairs. How could it be a boring narrative? And yet, the novel is not a potboiler in the traditional sense. There is no cathartic ending in which all the bad people get their comeuppance. No real heroes—except in the way that true friends can be heroic to each other. The story ends as satisfyingly quiet as it begins. Yes, after a long, hot summer, where the inhabitants of Shirley Falls are frying in the hell of their lives, the sky opens up and the heavens pour forth rain, providing at last a natural relief. Finally, the characters of Shirley Falls may breathe again. Until the next wave of heat develops.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Pat Benatar
 
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Also Leopold
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Jack London
FRI: My Book World | Bloom & Atkinson's ​Evidence of Love

0 Comments

Some 'Customs' Change

12/9/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
There is nothing quixotic or romantic in wanting to change the world. It is possible. It is the age-old vocation of all humanity.
​Gioconda Belli
​Author of 
Born December 9,1948
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G. Belli

My Book World

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​Wharton, Edith. The Custom of the Country. With an introduction by Cynthia Griffin Wolff. New York: Scribner, 1997 (1913).

Wharton, portrayer of early twentieth-century America, unveils the life of one Undine Spragg who, in time, will marry three men, one of them twice. From the time Undine is a young woman, she is hard to please. She never has quite the clothes she wants, never quite associates with the people she really wishes to. And when someone, like her parents, stretch themselves to make her happy, she is far from grateful. She is like this with each of her husbands, too, the first one an apparent rube from her small New York City suburb. Then, she marries up, a handsome man who might become a poet, but because she doesn’t wish to live on his small trust and make do, he must go to work. Jumping to France, she marries royalty, but even he doesn’t have enough money, and she leaves him, as well. Finally, she marries the rube again (he just happens to be in France), because since the early days he has become a billionaire. And he gives her nearly everything she can dream of, including a fine home to a little son (by husband two) she his ignored since his birth nine years earlier. She attempts to goad this man into becoming an ambassador (on the book’s last page), but when he tells her that she could never become an ambassador’s wife because she is divorced, she is furious. Wharton ends the novel this way:

[Undine] had learned that there was something she could never get, something that neither beauty nor influence nor millions could ever buy for her. She could never be an Ambassador’s wife: and as she advanced to welcome her first guests she said to herself that it was the one part she was really made for” (509).
​Wharton’s novel, some say, is prescient for its time, predicting what American society might become like. And along with Sinclair Lewis (Babbitt) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)—whose novels are published at roughly the same time (within a decade)—she limns what can happen to ambitious women who have no place in society except to be some man’s wife.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Kenneth Patchen
 
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Shirley Jackson
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Muriel Rukeyser
FRI: My Book World | Bloom & Atkinson's ​Evidence of Love
0 Comments

'Swan Wife' by Sarah Moore Wagner

12/2/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
. . . the measure of the value of any work of fiction . . . is the worth of the speculations, the philosophy, on which it rests, and which has entered into the conception of it.
​David Masson
Author of 
Edinburgh Sketches
​Born December 2, 1822
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D. Masson

My Book World

Wagner, Sara Moore. Swan Wife. San Diego: Cider Press, 2022.

These may be some of the most exciting poems, the most developed poems I’ve read by a contemporary poet in a long time. Wagner’s structure is deliberate, appropriating certain aspects from Joseph Campbell studies to frame her collection. Sure of her technique and subject matter, Wagner ensures her poems pop with energy: they possess a natural, almost childlike quality in their enthusiasm about youthful love, marriage, having that first child. In “Licentious,” my favorite passage may be:

                                      She tells me come out,
someone might see me, the bounce
of my breasts, this ache. I will have to marry the snake
slivering into the banks, will have to marry the sun,
a thick hand on my shoulders (xi).
 
Wagner’s title may well spring from “Ball and Chain,” the moment the persona emotionally becomes the betrothed, the soon-to-be swan wife:
 
                       I dipped my toes in and you called me swan,
you said you’ll go where you want. It was maybe then I knew you saw me, how I wanted to fly or float, to cover. How even a mute swan will hiss and attack if you get too close. How you called me beautiful then, so beautiful and so loud, the say I’d hoot up to the stars, the way I showed my teeth (7).
 
The poet’s persona maintains her controlled ebullience throughout the entire collection, and I hope to read more of Wagner’s work. Congratulations to her for winning the 2021 Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize Book Award. The collection is quite deserving.

​Coming Next:
TUES 12/06: A Writer's Wit |
Ève Curie 
WEDS 12/07: A Writer's Wit | Noam Chomsky
THURS 12/08: A Writer's Wit | John Banville
FRI 12/09: My Book World | Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country
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Oh, Strout Wins with 'William'

11/18/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy—which many believe goes hand in hand with it—will be dead as well.
​Margaret Atwood
Author of ​The Handmaid's Tale
​Born November 18, 1939
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M. Atwood

My Book World

Strout, Elizabeth. Oh William! New York: Random, 2021.

“Oh William!” becomes, before this novel is over, rather a poetic refrain uttered by the female narrator, Lucy Barton—a longtime figure in Strout’s fiction. Lucy and William marry when they are very young, then divorce after a number of years. They both remarry, and yet both remain in the lives of the children they’ve brought into the world as well. Strout travels back and forth through time so seamlessly that one is never lost in or by the narrative. It turns out that Lucy, like her creator, is also a successful writer, but Lucy carries a lot of baggage with her. So does William. Poor parenting they received in developmental years. Poverty of various kinds. And it is a good thing that they remain friends because after Lucy’s second husband dies and after William is left alone, they turn to each other to help the other through life’s difficulties as they age into their seventies. A very affecting book by one of my favorite authors.

​Coming Next:
TUES 11/29: A Writer's Wit | Sue Miller
WEDS 11/30: A Writer's Wit | Mark Twain

THURS 12/01: A Writer's Wit | World AIDS Day Observance
FRI 12/02: My Book World | Sarah M. Wagner's Swan Wife 
0 Comments

Pat Conroy: No Exaggeration Needed

11/11/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
The only way to know what is possible is to venture past impossible.
​Mary Gaitskill
Author of ​This Is Pleasure
​Born November 11, 1954
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M. Gaitskill

My Book World

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Clark, Katherine. My Exaggerated Life: Pat Conroy. As Told to Katherine Clark. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2018.

I don’t usually care for “as told to” books, but this one is too intriguing to pass up. Clark spends a number of years communicating with author Pat Conroy either by direct interviews or by way of written communications. He declares early on that his spoken language is much different from the prose he uses in his fiction. And his fiction (for those who don’t know Conroy)? The Great Santini. The Lords of Discipline. Beach Music, to name only a few. 
 
Each book that Conroy writes is his way of transforming the mess that is his autobiographical material. The Great Santini is essentially about his bully of an abusive father who cows Conroy’s mother and all his siblings. The Lords of Discipline is about his four years as a miserable cadet at the Citadel, in South Carolina. But his writing is also about his three marriages. His parents. His children. He writes, by the way, The Water Is Wide, the novel about a young man who teaches on an island with an all-Black classroom of children—made into a successful movie, Conrack, starring Jon Voight. In fact, Conroy makes a great deal of his income from selling the film rights to his works and getting a successful result—a rarity among novelists. 
 
I am much more encouraged to read Conroy’s oeuvre, in part, because I can now sense how difficult it is for him to arrive at each finished product. He is one of those persons who must fight for every minute of happiness, every inch of success, and Clark’s book relates his story plainly and with great sensitivity.

​Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Georgia O'Keeffe
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | George S. Kaufman

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lee Strasberg
FRI: My Book World | Elizabeth Strout's Oh, William!

0 Comments

Lone Star Short Stories: Two Books

11/4/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
I'm not an artist. I tell inappropriate stories and jokes and I try to make people laugh.
​Kathy Griffin
For Your Consideration (CD)
​Born November 4, 1960
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K. Griffin

My Book World

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Byrd, Bobby, and Johnny Byrd, editors. Lone Star Noir. New York: Akashic, 2010.

These fourteen stories, though set in the singular locale of Texas, are about the same things that noir is about in the other forty-nine states: avarice, greed, murder. Thus, making the collection rather universal. Divided into three parts—rural Texas, urban Texas, and Gulf-Coast Texas—each story brings to life those three qualities. Noir allows readers to experience this thrilling but illicit word vicariously so that we never ever have to commit such crimes ourselves. Title is part of the Akashic Noir Series.

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Peery, William, Editor. 21 Texas Short Stories. Austin: U of Texas P, 1954.

These twenty-one stories written by Texans (either by birth or by successful transplantation) were published between the early 1940s and the mid-1950s. But many of them chronicle earlier times, calling to mind rural-agrarian, nineteenth century Texas, calling to mind Texas’s involvement in the Civil War and slavery. Editor Peery features some famous names: O. Henry, Katherine Anne Porter, J. Frank Dobie, and Fred Gipson. But he also includes many fine writers who do not possess that kind of fame. Margaret Cousins, for example, may write the best, non-sentimental Christmas story I’ve ever read. “Uncle Edgar and the Reluctant Saint” tells the tale of a little girl who almost doesn’t get to celebrate Christmas with her family due to her train getting stuck in a freakish Texas snow storm. Her curmudgeon of an uncle happens to be on the train, a man who detests marriage, Christmas, and almost everything else that is part of civilization. He manages to come through for her and everyone else on the train without changing his character too much. All the stories reveal diction and dialog that are no longer used (probably), sort of Huck Finn meets the Texas State Fair. Worth the time, especially if you are interested in Texas folklore.

​Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Marianne Wiggins
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Carroll Quigley

THURS: A Writer's Wit | John P. Marquand
FRI: My Book World | Elizabeth Clark's Biography: My Exaggerated Life: Pat Conroy

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    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

    See my profile at Author Central:
    http://amazon.com/author/rjespers


    Richard Jespers's books on Goodreads
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