Category: History

A WRITER'S WIT: URSULA K. LE GUIN

10/21/2025

Some people see art as a matter of control. I see it mostly as a matter of self-control. It’s like this, in me there’s a story that wants to be told. It is my end. I am its means. If I can keep myself, my ego, my wishes and opinions, my mental junk, out of the way, and find the focus of the story, and follow the story, the story will tell itself.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Author of The Left Hand of Darkness
Born October 21, 1929

U. K. Le Guin

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Doris Lessing
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Leszek Kolakowski
FRI: A Writer's Wit | Amor Towles
My Book World | Domenico Starnone, The Old Man by the Sea

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SECOND OF BORDEAUX SERIES

9/26/2025

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A WRITER'S WIT
The immature poet imitates; the mature poet plagiarizes.
T. S. Eliot, Poet
Author of Four Quartets
Born September 26, 1888

T. S. Eliot

MY BOOK WORLD

Massie, Allan. Dark Summer in Bordeaux. London: Quartet, 2012.

Something comforting about sequels or book series: the same characters, some nice, some not. Rather like a family with whom you become reacquainted, and, good or bad, you can’t wait to see them again. So true with Massie’s four-book offering set during World War II.

Near the end of Death in Bordeaux, Lannes, la police judiciaire detective, manages to see that his son Dominique is released from his military POW camp in Germany. It is through a Faustian deal that he accomplishes this feat, but the act pleases Lannes’s wife no end, not to mention Lannes himself and his other two children. The family is once again intact. The murder from the first book, Death in Bordeaux, remains a secret, but now Lannes is faced with a new situation just as diabolical as in his first novel.

I thought the gay character (corpse with his penis in his mouth) was a one-off, but not so. In this sequel, Léon, a young chap who works in a bookshop (for the man whose brother was murdered) is quietly gay himself, not to mention being good friends with Lannes’s son, Alain, who is straight. Well. A young German soldier begins to flirt with Léon when he comes into the bookshop. Turns out they are being observed by an enemy operative who wishes to entrap the soldier. He enlists young Léon by raping him and saying that worse will happen if he does not help him to snare his German quarry. Reluctantly, but realizing he has no choice, Léon does the operative’s bidding. Later, the soldier will kill himself.

There is much more to this sequel which kept me turning the pages faster than the first one, and if you’re into sort-of murder mysteries, more thrillers, actually, then you may like this series. Oh, and this book might be renamed The Unsaid. Throughout there exist any number of inner monologues in which Lannes and others voice only through their thoughts what they would like to say aloud. Perhaps Massie is suggesting what it is like to live in German-occupied France during World War II. Effective in any case. Mum’s the word!

One caveat: the publisher does not seem to employ a very competent copy editor. Each book has close to a half-dozen errors in each (in Dark Summer, page 89, one main character’s name, Miriam, is misspelled, M-i-r-i-a-n). This kind of sloppiness spoils an otherwise pleasant reading experience.

Up Next:
MON 9/29: WHAT I'M THINKING ...
TUES 9/30: A Writer's Wit | Laura Esquivel
WEDS 10/01: A Writer's Wit | Faith Baldwin
THURS 10/02: A Writer's Wit | Terence Winter
FRI 10/03: A Writer's Wit | Gore Vidal
My Book World | TBD

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LAZY AVIATOR, Her AMBITIOUS HUSBAND

9/19/2025

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A WRITER'S WIT
The reader always knows better what a book is about than the writer.
William Golding
Author of Lord of the Flies
Born September 19, 1911

W. Golding

MY BOOK WORLD

Shapiro, Laurie Gwen. The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage That Made an American Icon. New York: Viking, 2025.

I grew up in the state of Kansas, and, as a child I heard a lot about aviatrix Amelia Earhart. The ironic thing I learn from this biography is that she and her family don’t spend all that much time in her hometown of Atchison. Yet her brief life there is foundational because her well-to-do grandparents see to it that she and her sister are educated by way of local elite schools. Amelia will later graduate from Columbia University in NYC. Another surprise for me: Although Earhart does become a noted pilot, her main career is that of social worker, and she stays with it a number of years before beginning to devote more time to aviation.

Most readers realize how and when Earhart is going to die, but Shapiro does seem to “foreshadow” Amelia’s path to that end throughout the book, beginning with “However, dating an aviator came with exasperating asterisks, and Sam lived in fear that he might one day discover his sometimes girlfriend, whose commitment he was finally winning over, had perished, despite spending hours in the field” (68). In addition, Amelia experiences several aviation failures, including crashes that destroy a number of expensive airplanes.

The book skillfully weaves together the stories of two individuals, Amelia Earhart and her husband George Palmer Putnam, and both narratives are important in order to understand the couple as a “unit.” Putnam is heir to the Putnam and Sons publishing empire, but though George works there for some time, he never flourishes to the degree that he becomes qualified to take over the reins when the opportunity arises. Instead, he becomes sort of a high-class huckster, selling (mostly) literary talent—but most especially he promotes the aviation career of his wife. Earhart, it turns out, isn’t as disciplined as she should be. For one, she doesn’t put in enough flight hours to be top-notch, and later on, particularly during her final hours over the Pacific Ocean, her failure to master Morse code will more than likely affect her ability to handle the perilous situation she sets up for herself and her alcoholic navigator, Fred Noonan (yet another error in judgment, but because of her weak reputation she can’t find a more reputable person to fly with her).

Shapiro sums up Earhart’s epic failure in 1937 this way: “The technical limitations of Amelia’s onboard equipment soon became apparent. Inadequate equipment, an off-calibrated compass, and erroneous chart coordinates converged into a navigational catastrophe. These issues, worsened by unexpected headwinds and a major navigational deviation, led to a bleak conclusion: Amelia Earhart and Fred Noon had vanished, possibly due to running out of fuel. Luck had been a lady before, but this time, she could no longer outrun fate” (388).

Though Shapiro is an excellent journalist and writer, I can’t help but be put off by some typos and sloppy copyediting:

Here Shapiro is writing in the past tense but then she shifts to the present for no apparent reason: “When the crayon heiress felt that a bigger house was needed and asked her parents for the money, George couldn’t be more pleased” (14). “. . . couldn’t have been more pleased” seems the preferable usage here, and I wonder why a copyeditor doesn’t catch the slip.

Needless repetition: “George told the candidate that he wanted to do one more discreet background check but would report back as soon as he could” (88). How about eliminating the second “back”?

Needless repetition: “. . . a protective smile gracing her face as memories of her own childhood curiosities flooded back. With her background as a social worker . . .” (148). How about “flooding into her mind” or similar?

Needless repetition: “. . . leaving him furious after defeat. After Elinor underwent . . .” (182). How about replacing the first “after” with “following”?

Needless repetition: “She recounted an encounter with a flock of pigeons . . .” (283). These are both embedded in other words but repetition is still avoidable. How about “She recounted a set-to with a flock of pigeons”?

Overall, I wish to say that the book is a very satisfying read, especially for fans of Amelia Earhart. It certainly gives readers a fuller and more accurate view of the woman’s life than the short feature I was forced to teach my sixth graders from the basal reader in the 1980s. Nothing there indicated Fred Noonan’s alcoholism or Earhart’s shortcomings.

Up Next:
MON 9/22: WHAT I'M THINKING ...
TUES 9/23: A Writer's Wit | Liz Murray
WEDS 9/24: A Writer's Wit | F. Scott Fitzgerald
THURS 9/25: A Writer's Wit | Barbara Walters
FRI 9/26: A Writer's Wit | T. S. Eliot
My Book World | Allan Massie, Dark Summer in Bordeaux

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A WRITER'S WIT: EDWARD GIBBON

5/8/2025

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There’s only one thing worse than the man who will argue over anything, and that’s the man who will argue over nothing.
Edward Gibbon
Author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Born May 8, 1737

E. Gibbon

Up Next:
FRI: My Book World | Julia Alvarez, Afterlife: A Novel
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Madeleine Albright
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Eoin Colfer
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Studs Terkel

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LONG-AGO MURDER HISTORY UNCOVERED

5/2/2025

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A WRITER'S WIT
We have to unclutter our brains from worries that maybe people don’t like us. Women tend to worry about popularity; it doesn't matter if they like you. They need to respect you. They need to show that respect for you in your pay check. And that needs to be okay.
Mika Brzezinski, NBC News
Author of All Things at Once
Born May 2, 1967

M. Brzezinski

MY BOOK WORLD

Thompson, Wright. The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi. New York: Penguin, 2024.

This excellent narrative reveals the horrifying story of the murder of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, in 1955. The author himself is from this region of the Mississippi delta, and part of the book is confessional, if not much of the tone. His only atonement, if that is the right word, for he doesn’t even learn of the murder until he is about to leave the state for college, is to research this story and present it to us, hopefully readers from around the world.

Young Emmett begs his mother to leave Chicago and travel with a friend and his parents to Mississippi, where his mother grew up. Something tells her not to let him. It may be that his frank and prankish nature could get him into trouble, but in the end, he convinces her. There is so much that is not known, mostly because so many people lie about the situation. Some say the murder takes place in a particular barn. Others say not. Some stories indicate Emmett “whistles” at a young married white woman running the little store he and his cousin enter to buy snacks. Others say he may whistle but not “at” the woman.

We do know, however, for sure, the two men responsible for murdering the person who is but still a child. The duo are put on trial locally, and the jury sets them free. The only justice available may be that the local whites then quite hypocritically treat the two men like pariahs for the rest of their lives. Except for little jobs here and there, they can’t get regular work. Their wives leave them, and both of them eventually die of cancer, almost literally as if the stress of committing their bad deed has eaten them alive.

The book is something for all Americans to consider, however, not just southerners or Mississippians. Nearly every state in the union has in some way treated blacks (and other minorities) just as cruelly in one way or another. We must not rely any longer on the thinking that because we weren’t present during times of slavery that we’re not responsible. What was termed Reconstruction must be completed for there ever to be any peace in this country.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret C. Nussbaum
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Edward Gibbon
FRI: My Book World | Julia Alvarez, Afterlife: A Novel

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SPYING, SERIOUS BUSINESS

3/7/2025

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A WRITER'S WIT
I am the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.
Amanda Gorman, Poet
Author of Call Us What We Carry
Born March 7, 1998

A. Gorman

MY BOOK WORLD

Haseltine, Eric. The Spy in Moscow Station: A Counterspy’s Hunt for a Deadly Cold War Threat. With a foreword by General Michael V. Hayden. New York: St. Martin’s, 2019.

I’ve never seen so many abbreviations for governmental organizations in one book, the easiest to remember of which may be NATO or NSA. Memorize these and more—OPS2, DARPA, IARPA, NSAAB, DS&T, SIGINT, TOPS, RSO, HUMINT—and the book is a joy to read. Seriously, the story, once the author gets to the heart of it, is quite titillating—especially if you’re into reading spy craft literature.

In the late 1970s, Charles Gandy is an NSA operative sent to Moscow to investigate the US embassy there. He discovers a “chimney” in the embassy building which is adjacent to a Russian government structure, which is not a chimney at all but a tall empty chamber aiming what looks like an antenna directly at the ambassador’s apartment in the embassy. For six years, Gandy fights others in his own organization, not to mention the CIA and the State department, to bring what seems may be a breach to the attention of muckety-mucks in the US government. Many interesting pages unravel that story, the gist of which is: A certain underling working for Gandy uncovers in about half of the thirty IBM Selectric typewriters a bar in which is embedded a transmitter that “reads” each typewriter key and thus translates important memos for the Russians. Since most everything is typed before being sent officially, this is a boon to the Russians.

For some reason, during that period CIA and State leadership underestimated Russian intelligence, mainly because they didn’t think Russia had the money to conduct this kind of research and experimentation. The US looked at the primitive products (including automobiles) that Russian produced and extrapolated the wrong conclusion. The thesis of this book may be that this was a strategic mistake for which our country is still paying quite a price (i.e. Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election which most probably helped to elect Trump). Enough said. And as far as we know, our government is still underestimating the damage the Russians continue to do to our well-being each day.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Deborah Copaken Kogan
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Dave Eggers
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Margaret Craven
FRI: My Book World | Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep: A Novel

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STORY OF THE MASON DIXON LINE

2/7/2025

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A WRITER'S WIT
When I run the world, librarians will be exempt from tragedy. Even their smaller sorrows will last only for as long as you can take out a book.
Karen Joy Fowler
Author of The Jane Austen Book Club
Born February 7, 1950

K. J. Fowler

MY BOOK WORLD

Pynchon, Thomas. Mason and Dixon. New York: Holt, 1997.

My partner and I listened to the 48-hour Audible version of this book narrated by a fascinating British actor, Steven Crossley. He seemed to bring life to each character with an singular idiolect, particularly to the principals, Mason and Dixon. Often written without speech attribution, the dialogue was easier to understand with Crossley’s superior reading ability. I followed along with a hard copy of the book.

The story of the two men who created the 233-mile boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania—the Mason Dixon line—became better known for establishing a line between the warring North and South of the USA. The novel also sets up a much fuller picture of the men’s lives as individuals and as partners in various ventures. One of the most fascinating may be their noting of the Transit of Venus multiple times and places throughout the world. Mason is laconic and melancholy, whereas Dixon is more garrulous and freewheeling in his dealings with the world—challenging their friendship and partnership to the nth degree at times—but also setting up a unique and rare lifelong friendship.

A long slog of a read, but it is quite worth it, especially if you hear someone else (a professional) read it aloud!

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Sandra Tsing Loh
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Judy Blume
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Ricardo Güiraldes
FRI: My Book World | Graham Norton, Ask Graham

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LINCOLN REVISITED

8/9/2024

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A WRITER'S WIT
Lie on the bridge and watch the water flowing past. Or run, or wade through the swamp in your red boots. Or roll yourself up and listen to the rain falling on the roof. It's very easy to enjoy yourself.
Tove Janssan
Author of The Summer Book
Born August 9, 1914

T. Janssan

MY BOOK WORLD

Freedman, Russell. Lincoln: A Photobiography. New York: Clarion, 1987.

A 1987 Newbery Award winner, this book informs all readers (not just children for whom it is meant) about things they might not have known concerning Abraham Lincoln. I am glad I finally read it and marveled in its unique photographs and illustrations.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Kate Walbert
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Steve Martin
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Robert Bolt
FRI: My Book World | Robert Fiske, The Dictionary of Disagreeable English

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STILL CURIOUS ABOUT JFK

7/12/2024

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A WRITER'S WIT
Tony Awards boost Broadway attendance and sell the shows on the road. They're the sugar to swat the fly. If you needed more explanation for the yearly ballyhoo, in the metropolitan areas where a Broadway show plays, the local economy is boosted by three and a half times the gross ticket sales. So when we're talking Tonys, we're talking moolah.
John Lahr
Author of Prick up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton
Born July 12, 1941

J. Lahr

MY BOOK WORLD

Kenney, Charles. With an introduction by Michael Beschloss. John F. Kennedy: The Presidential Portfolio. History as Told through the Collection of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. New York: PublicAffairs, 2000. [Includes CD with speeches, dictated letters, and phone calls recorded by JFK.]

This book, no matter how much one may have read about John F. Kennedy, provides details that might be surprising—with regard to his upbringing and family line. Both of his parents are Irish immigrants who then become millionaires in the United States. There are details of his education, his military career, and his time in politics. Many pages feature original documents that JFK himself writes, speeches and the like.

The CD is comprised of a series of dictations Kennedy is making to his secretary by way of a Dictaphone, as well as commentary by historian, Michael Beschloss. A chapter near the end summarizes the day in 1963 that he is assassinated. JFK’s wife, Jackie, cries out: “He’s dead—they’ve killed him—Oh Jack, oh Jack, I love you” (223). I was fifteen when this momentous day in history took place, but I never recall hearing of this intimacy uttered in her last minutes with her husband as they are about to roll him away. The book is full of these small surprises, and I can see myself returning to its pages to review them, lest I forget, lest I forget.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Tony Kushner
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Phyllis Diller
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Nelson Mandela
FRI: My Book World | Nell Freudenberger, The Limits

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A SUNNY AND WILDER ADVENTURE

7/5/2024

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A WRITER'S WIT
Women have more to prove than men when it comes to politics.
Julie Nixon Eisenhower
Author of Special People
1948

J. Nixon Eisenhower

MY BOOK WORLD

Dahlstrom, S. J. Wilder and Sunny. Philadelphia: Paul Dry, 2015.

Dahlstrom writes so nicely for children. He doesn’t talk down to them. In fact, he strives to expand their vocabularies, I believe. In this simple adventure in which a friend of the family, a man of seventy-two, takes twelve-year-old Wilder and his female friend Sunny on a fishing trip. The author goes into great detail about trout fishing in Colorado, incorporating words like tippet, hopper-dropper, bead head, and two-fly rig. You either get meaning by context or author explanation or looking them up. Either way you learn. The climax of the book may be when, during this camping trip, the three campers are confronted by a mother bear and two cubs. It is a realistic and dynamic depiction, rather graphic at times, but it does give Wilder and Sunny a chance to grow up in certain ways before Sunny’s father locates them and saves them from further adventures. Wilder and Sunny form a bond that may last well into the future. Only time will tell.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Dorothy Thompson
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Alice Munro
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Frederick Beuchner
FRI: My Book World | Charles Kenney, John F. Kennedy: The Presidential Portfolio. History as Told through the Collection of the JFK Library

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PLAZA: HISTORY OF A HOTEL

6/28/2024

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A WRITER'S WIT
Avoid theatrical flourishes—the phrases that sound so damned good that they stand up and beg to be recognized as “good writing,” and therefore must be struck from the text.
Donald Spoto
Author of The Dark Side of Genius
Born June 28, 1941

D. Spoto

MY BOOK WORLD

Satow, Julie. The Plaza: The Secret Life of America’s Most Famous Hotel. New York: Hatchette, 2019.

In my opinion the best part of the book consists of the first two thirds. Those chapters concern themselves with the construction of the hotel which opens in 1907—up through World War II. By that time the hotel has acquired thirty-nine widows who are given life-time residential privileges. The last third of the book examines the 1990s, when D. Trump attempts to acquire the Plaza. But his credit is so bad others buy it out from under him. The most boring chapter may be after two billionaire gentlemen purchase the Plaza and convert a great percentage of it to huge and exclusive condos. The tedium continues when the author insists on informing readers how many buyers of these condos exhibit remorse, how much money they lose when they try to flip them. No, the most interesting portions of the book may have to do with the fascinating personalities who live and work at the Plaza throughout its more than one hundred years. If you’re into that kind of history, fat-cat buyers at the turn of this century notwithstanding, then the book is for you. Each chapter is a stand-alone episode in the life of this historic architectural structure resting at the very edge of New York’s Central Park, and I found that most of them piqued my interest.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Medgar Evers
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Dorothy Kilgallen
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Calvin Coolidge
FRI: My Book World | S. J. Dahlstrom, Wilder and Sunny

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A WRITER'S WIT: GEORGE ORWELL

6/25/2024

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It was infuriating. I had been a hundred and fifteen days in the line and had come back to Barcelona ravenous for a bit of rest and comfort; and instead I had to spend my time sitting on a roof opposite Civil Guards as bored as myself, who periodically waved to me and assured me that they were “workers” (meaning that they hoped I would not shoot them), but who would certainly open fire if they got the order to do so. If this was history it did not feel like it.
[From Homage to Catalonia]
George Orwell
Author of Homage to Catalonia
Born June 25, 1903

G. Orwell

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Aubrey Plaza
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Alice McDermott
FRI: My Book World | Julie Satow, The Plaza: The Secret Life of America's Most Famous Hotel

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GHOSTS ABOUND

5/31/2024

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A WRITER'S WIT
For . . . austere and gracious allegory, as for so much of its mysticism and its chivalry, its ardours and its endurances, the world is in debt to Spain.
Helen Waddell
Author of The Desert Fathers
Born May 31, 1889

H. Waddell

MY BOOK WORLD

Fitzgerald, Daniel G. Faded Dreams: More Ghost Towns of Kansas. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 1994.

This book no doubt creates a rich resource for those searching for specific information regarding ghost towns located in one of the 105 Kansas counties. I, myself, found Fitzgerald’s first book (Ghost Towns of Kansas, Volume I) helpful when I became curious about the former town of Runnymede, where, in 1924, my maternal grandfather established a grocery store—only to fail a year later because the automobile allowed people to travel to other towns for their needs. However, by reading about these over one hundred ghost towns, one begins to sense a mosaic of the state’s checkered history, as well. How, for example, some nineteenth-century Kansans were pro-slavery and others were freestaters, in favor of abolition, that people murdered others with regard to the issue. One state historian establishes that from its inception Kansas garnered over 6,000 town “start-ups,” and that if they all had flourished (theoretically) one could not now drive twelve miles in any direction without encountering another town.

Of course, reality has turned out being very different. Vast acreages of agricultural land and prairies have swallowed up those former towns—leaving only crumbling foundations or memorial plaques found on what is now private property. Any number of events or trends contributed to the defeat of these ghost towns. Even grand entrepreneurial efforts failed. Important infrastructure (roads, rivers, and railways) did not materialize. Political decisions made in Topeka or county seats (some of those heartily fought over) ruined yet other towns. Catastrophic weather events played a part in some cases. Some towns just lacked proper leadership from the beginning. Thus, Fitzgerald paints a fascinating history of primarily nineteenth-century Kansas (although many towns do not emit their last gasp until the 1930s), in which mostly white people from the east and European locations do battle with indigenous people to usurp or purchase lands that are questionably for sale in the first place. And the author does so without favor to either side. Just the facts. In any event, and regardless of motive, the people portrayed here do represent a certain heroic and pioneer spirit attempting literally to create something out of nothing. The text includes fascinating vintage photos, as well.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Ruth Westheimer
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Margaret Drabble
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Pierre Corneille
FRI: My Book World | Kara Swisher, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story

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A WRITER'S WIT: JOHN F. KENNEDY

5/29/2024

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When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Author of Profiles in Courage
Born May 29, 1917

J. F. Kennedy

Up Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Ken Dixon
FRI: My Book World | Daniel Fitzgerald, Faded Dreams: More Ghost Towns of Kansas

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PAST IS PREQUEL FOR MADDOW

1/12/2024

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A WRITER'S WIT
Every day I go to my study and sit at my desk and put the computer on. At that moment, I have to open the door. It's a big, heavy door. You have to go into the Other Room. Metaphorically, of course. And you have to come back to this side of the room. And you have to shut the door.
Haruki Murakami
Author of Killing Commendation
Born January 12, 1949

H. Murakami

MY BOOK WORLD

Maddow, Rachel. Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. New York: Crown, 2023.

This cautionary tale should be read by every adult in America. It should be taught in every college America history class. It should be available to all public libraries. Why? Essentially because Maddow painstakingly tells the story of German Nazis who, in the 1930s and 1940s, make plans to sweep America up into its fascist web. And the main players happen to be American citizens who in various ways enable the Germans: congresspeople and other public figures. Maddow provides lists of the good guys and the bad (some are even women). She carefully lays out for readers how all this takes place. The most important message, however, is, for the most part, unwritten. She, by the title she uses, would like for us to see that it could happen again. There are people in congress, just as eighty years ago, who would like to enable a fascist-leaning leader to become president. And we must stop them.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Susan Sontag
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Newton Minow
THURS: A Writer's Wit | A. A. Milne
FRI: My Book World | Patricia Highsmith, Edith's Diary

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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

B. Pym

My Book World

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

S. Armitage

My Book World

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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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

J. Damski

My Book World

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

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

O. Schreiner

My Book World

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. Grant 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 the union 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 contest 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 at 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 motif 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

Vietnam: 'Bright Shining Lie'

10/28/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums . . . who find prison so soul destroying.
Evelyn Waugh
Author of Brideshead Revisited
Born October 28, 1903

E. Waugh

My Book World

Sheehan, Neil. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. New York: Random, 1988.

One might wonder how the story of a single man might also tell the complete story of a war that that man participates in. Yet that is precisely what the late journalist and author Neil Sheehan does in his award-winning book, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. John Paul Vann might be a larger-than-life character if indeed he were a larger-than-life person. He is not. And Sheehan takes great pains to explain to readers Vann’s poverty-stricken childhood, one in which Vann (his adopted name) is born out of wedlock and would rather take the name of his stepfather than the name of the father who brings shame upon him (although he does become acquainted with the man later). Vann begins his wannabee life by earning a good education. He is always about self-improvement as far as his career is concerned and seeks more degrees even while working full time. At a personal level, Van remains a mess for the remainder of his life. His early poverty, the rejection of him by his mother, always plays a role in his judgment.

John Paul Vann commits a crime he ultimately gets away with (he does no jail time) because his wife testifies on his behalf and because he teaches himself to beat the military’s polygraph machine—another blemish on his larger-than-life image. Yet the existence of this trial dogs him as he attempts to climb the military ladder of success via the back door (certainly not West point). Vann places career before his wife and children. He allows his voracious sexual appetite (as many as three acts of coitus a day in his forties) commands him to do whatever necessary to satisfy it: lie, cheat, manipulate. He all but divorces his wife (and children) to accommodate his promiscuity, keeping secret from each other the lives of his Vietnamese lover and (illegal) wife.

Yet all the while Vann possesses an honest and accurate perception of the Vietnam War beginning early on in the 1950s. He perceives that the U.S. military complex, since its recent victories with World War II, develops an arrogance that keeps its leadership from assessing the Vietnam War honestly. Army leaders refuse to learn anything about Vietnam: its centuries-long battles to fight off (successfully) foreign invaders. It refuses to realize that South Vietnam government is weak and corrupt and as such never fights the North with full force. It refuses to realize that the Vietnam people are one and that often the enemy looks like the ally and vice-versa.

The Battle of Ap Bac, in 1962, is one in which everything that can go wrong does go wrong—the American Army losing hundreds of lives in spite of its military “superiority.” The Viet Cong (North Vietnam Communists) capture abandoned U.S. equipment, expensive weaponry, and use them against the South supported by the U.S. military. Miliary leaders fail to realize Vietnam is one country, that it cannot be divided as North Korea was. The people pass back and forth over the imagined line of the 38th Parallel undetected. Vann ultimately believes that how Vietnam determines its future ought to be up to its people, a struggle that, even if it turns to Communism, is not the business of the United States. There is no such thing as the so-called Domino Theory. The lives and money being spent for nearly two decades are a wasted expense, to say the least.

And yet, Vann, up until the very last of his career, continues to believe that with his superior leadership, the war can be won—even after the Tet Offensive and other failures. In June 1972, unable to obtain the service of his usual helicopter pilot, Vann makes an ill-advised night flight in fog with an inexperienced twenty-six-year-old pilot and all occupants crash to their deaths, Vann believing until the end that he has won the war. It will not end, of course, for several more years, in 1975, when the U.S. finally admits defeat and vacates the decimated country.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Jessica Valenti
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Thomas Mallon
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Walker Evans
FRI: My Book World | Lone Star Short Stories: Two Books

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Ackerley's 'Hindoo Holiday'

10/21/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
All reduction of people to objects, all imposition of labels and patterns to which they must conform, all segregation can lead only to destruction.
Maureen Duffy
Author of The Microcosm
Born October 21, 1933

M. Duffy

My Book World

Ackerley, Joe Randolph. Hindoo Holiday: An Indian Journal. With an introduction by Eliot Weinberger. New York: NYRB, 2000 (1932).

As a young man in his thirties, Ackerley visits India for a protracted amount of time. This book is essentially his diary of what takes place. As out as he can be for his time, Ackerley has no problem stating his admiration for a handsome man. He is not, however, a typical British tourist. He lives the life, hiring a young man to tutor him in the language. The man turns out to be more of a pest, always conniving to extract money or favors from Ackerley, like a pesky dog begging for scraps. But Ackerley learns enough to get by. He also learns the intricacies of the Hindu religion, finding, as with Christians, that some believers practice it with a certain flexibility or laxity. A still entertaining book these many decades later.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Anne Tyler
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Gelek Rimpoche
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Fran Lebowitz
FRI: My Book World | Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Van and America in Vietnam

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A Writer's Wit: Peter Ackroyd

10/5/2022

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Rioting has always been a London tradition. It has been since the early Middle Ages. There's hardly a spate of years that goes by without violent rioting of one kind or another. They happen so frequently that they are almost part of London's texture.
Peter Ackroyd
Author of Queer City
Born October 5, 1949

P. Ackroyd

Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Thor Heyerdahl
FRI: My Book World | Ann Patchett's The Dutch House

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A Writer's Wit: Howard Zinn

8/24/2022

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If those in charge of our society—politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television—can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.
Howard Zinn
Author of A People's History of the United States
Born August 24, 1926

H. Zinn

Coming Next:
THURS: AWW | Nadine Stair
FRIDAY: My Book World | Heather Clark's Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

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Her Name Forever

7/15/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me.
Arianna Huffington
Author of On Becoming Fearless...in Love, Work, and Life
Born July 15, 1950

My Book World

Pellegrino, Charles. Her Name, Titanic: The Untold Story of the Sinking and Finding of the Unsinkable Ship. New York: McGraw, 1988.

I’ve been a fan of the Titanic’s story since I was a child. I read every magazine article, every book I could find on the subject—even as an adult I collected books. I watched every film, fiction or documentary. This book, though dated now in some ways, does combine two strands: 1) the eyewitness details left behind by those who were there to witness the sinking: passengers, crew members, children—always the more interesting narrative, to me. Pellegrino also unveils the thread of how oceanographer Robert Ballard locates the Titanic’s remains and visits them in a, for the time (1987), innovative “submarine” equipped with cameras.

The most astounding part of Ballard’s story seems to be that he is so overcome with emotion on seeing the pristine quality of certain artifacts left behind—china, passenger shoes, and other memorabilia—that he has no desire to lift any of it for souvenirs. Rather, he disguises the exact GPS location from journalists and the world, so that the site might remain what it has been since it all came to rest in the icy North Atlantic floor in 1912, and that is a place of memorial. Of course, other parties do locate the ship and make a commercial venture of it, but Ballard’s stance must be the higher ground, in a manner of speaking.

Coming Next:
TUES: AWW | Ethan Canin
WEDS: AWW | Cormac McCarthy
THURS: AWW | Sarah Waters
NEXT FRI: My Book World | Ellen Summerfield's Bite-Sized Poems: An Anthology

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Taking Whacks at Lizzie's Legend

2/25/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
You go to school, you get a master's degree, you study Shakespeare and you wind up being famous for plastic glasses.
Sally Jessy Raphael
Host of Sally (1983-2002)
Born February 25, 1935

S. J. Raphael

MY Book World

Robertson, Cara. The Trial of Lizzie Borden: A True Story. New York: Simon, 2019.

If most readers are like me, what they know about one historical figure, Lizzie Borden, can be summed up in the following ditty:

Lizzie Borden took an ax,
Gave her mother forty whacks,
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

After reading Robertson’s book, I see that there is so much wrong with this rhyming escapade. One, if Lizzie Borden did kill her stepmother and father, Borden was never proven guilty. The actual perpetrator whacked Mrs. Borden only nineteen times. And certainly Mr. Borden did not receive forty-one chops. I had always assumed that Lizzie Borden was convicted and had served time in prison. But no.

This book takes readers through the entire trial process beginning with a detailed description of the murder scene. Briefly, someone axes Mrs. Borden and then an hour and a half later, when Mr. Borden has returned to the house, someone axes him downstairs as he’s napping on a sofa. The police investigators, lacking obvious clues, begin to suspect Lizzie, who remains almost preternaturally calm throughout the initial investigation, neither crying nor showing any sign of agitation, as Robertson writes (33). Andrew Jennings, Lizzie’s counsel, addresses the jury: “’your task is not to unravel the mystery.’ Instead, he said they must ask themselves: ‘Have they [the prosecution] furnished the proof, the proof that the law requires, that Lizzie Andrew Borden did it, and that there is absolutely no opportunity for anybody else?” (208). And throughout the past one hundred years there has existed such a great desire, on the part of some, to solve the mystery.

Near the end, Robertson summarizes these various interpretations that begin in the 1950s. For example, there is “the widely held speculation, which gained currency in the early 1990s, that Lizzie Borden committed the murders after enduring years of sexual abuse by her father [she was thirty-two]. The bedrooms that opened onto each other, the dead mother, the powerless stepmother, the special understanding between father and daughter symbolized by the ‘thin gold band’—all crystalized into a suddenly obvious solution, a solution that seemed to explain not only the identity of the killer but also the very brutality of the crimes” (284).

In any case, Robertson’s thorough research (some eighty pages of Notes) and lightly treading interpretation make for a fascinating read, particularly if you are a true crime fan, as I am. The book abounds with photographs, as well, mostly provided by the Fall River, Massachusetts, Historical Society.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns

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