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Sedaris: Always a Carnival

9/23/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
Propaganda is that branch of lying which often deceives your friends without ever deceiving your enemies.
​Walter Lippmann
Author of America Tomorrow: Creating the Great Society
​Born September 23, 1889
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W. Lippmann

My Book World

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​Sedaris, David. A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020). New York: Little, 2021.

Much like Sedaris’s first journal, this one contains a mixture of “Dear Diary” items along with jokes people tell him, along with long anecdotes about people he knows, along with a certain political polemic (which I love), and more, like overheard conversations in public places. If I were teaching creative writing, I would lift portions of both of Sedaris’s diaries to demonstrate how writers can mine their own diaries for topics or scenarios for other works.
 
In the early part of his first diary, Sedaris is a poor writer. In this one, he is somewhat more solvent and becoming more so all the time. Now, the man is so busy with readings and lectures, he’s always on a plane, and the airport world alone must offer up some of his richest observations. His dated entries from all around the world show a man who is interested in people, what makes them tick, what makes them say the things they do. Not that he always understands, but he is curious enough to record some of the ridiculous, confounding, or even wise things they say to him. Overheard conversations. How his day has gone, if he’s at home in one of two or three dwellings he owns in England or France. How the day has gone for his husband, Hugh. Jokes. Yes, plenty of jokes people take pride in telling him at one of his readings as he is signing books.
“A guy finds a genie who grants him three wishes, adding that everything the man gets, his wife will get double. ‘Great,’ the guy says, and he wishes for a big house. Then he wishes for a car. Finally, he says, ‘Okay, now I want you to beat me half to death” (211).
 
“It’s night, and a cop stops a car a couple of priests are riding in. ‘I’m looking for two child molesters,’ he says.
         The priests think for a moment. ‘We’ll do it!’ they say” (445).
Sedaris’s title is derived from this tidbit dated March 23, 2013, London: Frank and Scott went to an Indian restaurant the other night and took a picture of the menu, which offered what is called “a carnival of snackery” (289). Indeed, that’s what this book is, and the delightful thing is it doesn’t cost you one calorie to consume!

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Myrtle Reed
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Elmer Rice
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Elizabeth Gaskell
FRI: My Book World | Jennifer Egan's The Candy House
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'Homesickness' Yields Great Stories

9/2/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
A “good” family, it seems, is one that used to be better.
​Cleveland Amory
Author of ​The Best Cat Ever
​Born September 2, 1917
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C. Amory

My Book World

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Barrett, Colin. Homesickness: Stories. New York: Grove, 2022.

This collection contains ten phenomenal stories, mostly set in Ireland. From one about a man who shoots someone in self-defense to a forty-pager about a professional soccer (futbol) player deciding what to do with his life once his career is over, these stories are vibrant with life. What do I mean? They reveal real people in real situations, often ending quietly, with barely a whimper—like most events in our own lives. Yet we recall such situations over and over again with great delight.

Coming Next:
9/20 TUES: AWW | Elise Broach
9/21 WEDS: AWW | Janet Burroway
9/22 THURS: AWW | David Riesman
9/23 FRI: My Book World | David Sedaris's A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020)
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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
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My Book World

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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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Young Gay Man Is 'Railroaded'

6/24/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.
Henry Ward Beecher
Author of Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
​Born June 24, 1813
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H. W. Beecher

My Book World 

PictureWoodruff with His Horse
Crawford, Phillip, Jr. Railroaded: The Homophobic Prosecution of Brandon Woodruff for His Parents’ Murders. Kindle: CreateSpace, 2018.

Full disclosure: I won this Kindle version of Crawford’s book by way of a goodreads.com giveaway. I am providing this review because I do believe it is a narrative worth reading.
 
This brief book is reminiscent of absorbing feature articles I’ve read in Texas Monthly—stories of true crime set in the Lone Star State. As a gay man who has lived in Texas for over fifty years, I felt drawn to this case I’d never heard of before. Woodruff is a nineteen-year-old boy charged with murdering his parents in their home. Crawford displays a fine grasp of the tenuous legal situation for gays in Texas, and he sets up the facts of the case for readers to see that Brandon Woodruff is wrongly prosecuted and convicted. At the very least the teen should be given a fair trial.

Throughout the book Crawford makes clear, among others, certain facts. A Texas Ranger from Austin is assigned the case, rather than a local or regional official. This Ranger conducts a smear campaign against Brandon because of his participation in a gay social life and for appearing in legitimate pornographic movies, “evidence” that has nothing to do with the case but which prejudices the jury. The Ranger also fails to take advantage of information that does exist, for one, cell phone records that would indicate Brandon is not anywhere near the location at the time of the murders. By such evidence alone, he could not possibly have committed the murders. While some guilty parties never show any emotion when hearing the news of loved one’s murders, reliable witnesses testify that Brandon loves his parents, particularly his father, who has a sympathetic view of his son’s homosexuality—and he is beset with grief from the beginning. Brandon’s sister, who is more temperamentally bent toward anger and violence against their parents than Brandon, is never fully investigated. What about her whereabouts on the night of the murder? Her phone records? A party or parties who might have committed the murders on her behalf? One suspect, an ex-friend of Brandon’s who is vehemently homophobic, lies to Ranger Collins, and Collins conveniently never puts the ex-buddy on the stand at the trial. The Texas Ranger takes the easy way out all around, and Brandon Woodruff, now nearing age thirty-six, still remains in prison, a long life-term ahead of him.
 
If readers want to help Brandon Woodruff’s cause, they can go to the website freebrandon.org to donate and/or sign a petition to be sent to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. This is a wrong that must be righted and soon. Thanks to Phillip Crawford, Jr. for documenting this case in such a decisive manner.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World |  Lynne Olson's Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War
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Author Loves His Tulip

5/27/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people.
​John Barth
Author of Lost in the Funhouse
​Born May 27, 1930
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J. Barth

My Book World

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Ackerley, Joe Randolph. My Dog Tulip. With an introduction by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. New York: NYRB, 1999 (1965).

A man in his sixties when he writes this book, Ackerley tells the story of his beloved Alsatian or German Shepherd, Tulip. I began the book thinking Tulip’s story would be broader in context, but I was wrong. A large middle section involves Ackerley’s attempts to mate Tulip properly with another Alsatian. In minute detail, and in a way that only the British can do, he writes delicately about an indelicate subject: Tulip’s female parts and how they operate every time she is on heat (a term he deems crude but still uses). A swelling this, and dripping that. But overall, the book is an unsentimental portrait of what according to Ackerley is an extraordinary Alsatian bitch whom he loves very much.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Nancy Turner's These Is My Words
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Rosshalde: Story of a Child

5/20/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
A working definition of fathering might be this: fathering is the act of guiding a child to behave in ways that lead to the child's becoming a secure child in full, thus increasing his or her chances of being happy and fruitful as a young adult.
​Clyde Edgerton
Author of Walking Across Egypt
​Born May 20, 1944
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C. Edgerton

My Book World

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Hesse, Hermann. Rosshalde. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Bantam, 1956 (1914).

Spoiler: This novel is primarily about the death of a young child, a son named Pierre. But it is also about the death of a family, how a husband and wife drift apart and divide their love between two sons, the elder “belonging” to the wife and Pierre belonging to his father. But there isn’t much belongingness for any of the family members. The book overall is about the end of their life together at the estate called Rosshalde, an expansive property, a mansion, that seems to have a life of its own. An enchanting but sad read.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | J. R. Ackerley's My Dog Tulip
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Highsmith's Diaries and Notebooks

5/13/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
Take it from someone who fled the Iron Curtain: I know what happens when you give the Russians a green light.
​Madeleine Albright
Author of Fascism: A Warning
​Born May 13, 1937
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M. Albright

My Book World

Von Planta, Anna, ed. Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks. With an introduction by Joan Schenkar. New York: Liveright, 2021.

This more than fifty-year compendium of Highsmith’s 8,000 pages of diary and notebook entries is a stunning read—particularly if you savor the voyeuristic practice of reading someone’s private thoughts. Her diary entries are brutally honest about everything from her current girlfriend(s) with whom she is madly in love to resentments toward her mother, estranged father, and stepfather. Though bright enough to graduate from Barnard, she never quite masters the art of achieving a meaningful love relationship; her tone seems the same for fifty years. I can’t understand why this relationship has failed. And yet, I believe she does know why: her profession requires much alone time, which is not compatible with a needy lover.
 
Her notebooks, on the other hand, are about her current and proposed works, sometimes a poem here and there. She also talks business. About her agent(s), once her sales go international. Her publishers. Friendships, lasting ones at that, with a broad range of writers. Strong female writers (mostly part of a lesbian group of professionals) mentor Highsmith on how to navigate the heady waters of being a single woman sometimes writing about being queer. Early on, when she is young, she has sex and “love” relationships with a few men, but none of them is every satisfying.

What may be most fascinating is to watch how her life and living influence particular books. The Ripley series of five novels has such an authentic, European backdrop because besides being multilingual, Highsmith lives in Europe much of her life. Still, having been born in Fort Worth, Texas, she does return there to visit once her parents move back from New York. Yet she harbors deep resentments against her abusive mother, who lives to be ninety-five (PH nearly perceives it as a punishment), and, because of her own health problems, fails to visit upon her mother’s own funeral. A sad but triumphant ending for a triumphant but oft-times sad and lonely life. If readers have time, it is well worth theirs to read these 1,000 pages, especially if they’re curious about the writer who authored Strangers on a Train and the Ripley series of five novels, a total of thirty-two books.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World |  Hermann Hesse's Rosshalde.
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Writing at One Hundred

4/1/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
I think a lot of people of my generation are discomfited by the assertion of neutrality in the mainstream media, this idea that they're the voice of God. I think it's just honest to say, yes, you know where I'm coming from but you can fact-check anything I say.
​Rachel Maddow
Author of Bag Man
Born April 1, 1973
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R. Maddow

My Book World

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Wouk, Herman. Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-year-Old Author. New York: Simon, 2016.

The most fascinating aspect of this book may be indeed be Wouk’s age (b. May 27, 1915 and d. May 17, 2019, making him 10 days short of 104). One of the keys to his longevity may be that he never stops writing. In this slim tome, he relates the stories of each one of his books and how they come to be, but along with each one, he also shares where he is at the time. For example, while working on one novel for seven years, he and his wife buy a house in the Caribbean and reside there with their sons in paradise until he is finished. The book is a great way to become acquainted with his oeuvre if one isn’t already.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | *Anthony Quinn's Novel, Freya
(*British author, not the late American actor)
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Coppola: True to His Vision

3/25/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
If birds will abandon their young rather than miss the moment to begin a flight of thousands of miles, what migratory signals might our own cells still hold?
​Gloria Steinem
Author of My Life on the Road
Born March 25, 1934
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G. Steinem

My Book World

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Schumacher, Michael. Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker’s Life. New York: Crown, 1999.

If readers are fans of both film and director Coppola, this book is an embarrassment of riches—at least as far as it takes us, through 1998 when the book comes out. One may not realize, for example, how easy the 1970s seem for Coppola, succeeding beyond his wildest dreams with The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. The next twenty years are more arduous, and Coppola loses his credibility at times. He wishes to be more of an artiste, making films that appeal to him but perhaps not the public at large—or the studios. Even when he makes a big-budget, mass-appeal film, he is almost always at loggerheads with studio execs over scripts and, of course, money. He is a creative man, who also finances, for a time, his own studio, and even publishes a literary magazine, Zoetrope: All Story, which still exists today—not to mention a number of other enterprises including a winery. He ends the nineties having made enough money to dig himself out of debt and establish an independent life. Although he continues to make film, it is at his own pleasure. One has to admire that.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Herman Wouk's  Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author
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How We Live, How We Die

3/18/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
I have never been convinced there's anything inherently wrong in having fun.
​George Plimpton
Author of Paper Lion
Born March 18, 1927
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G. Plimpton

My Book World

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Athill, Diana. Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir. New York: Norton, 2009.

Diana Athill lived to be 101. She published this book at age ninety, ninety-one. An editor for a long time, she writes here and writes convincingly of her life, not only her old age but her younger life as well: her loves and losses, her miscarriage near menopause, her decision very early on that she doesn’t much care for children (though she mourns the child she loses, demonstrating a complexity of her own character). Somewhere towards the end of this thin tome, Athill states,
So an individual life is interesting enough to merit examination, and my own is the only one I really know (as Jean Rhys, faced with this same worry, always used to say), and if it is to be examined, it should be examined as honestly as is possible within the examiner’s inevitable limitations. To do it otherwise is pointless—and also makes very boring reading, as witness many autobiographies by celebrities of one sort or another” (181).
Athill’s longevity may, in part, be due to an active life, one in which she continues to learn how to do new things—not well or professionally, perhaps—but something novel nonetheless. One among many lessons we all might learn from her as we all slouch toward that same ending.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Michael Shumacher's  Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker’s Life
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Untold Railroad History

3/11/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT:
Bardot, Byron, Hitler, Hemingway, Monroe, Sade: we do not require our heroes to be subtle, just to be big. Then we can depend on someone to make them subtle.
​D. J. Enright
Author of The Oxford Book of Death
Born March 11, 1920
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D. J. Enright

My Book World

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Sedgwick, John. From the River to the Sea: The Untold Story of the Railroad War That Made the West.  New York: Avid, 2021.

If you’ve ever driven on an Interstate highway in the western United States—at posted speeds of 80 mph or faster, and people do zoom faster—it can seem as if you’re passing through a Disneyland sort of panorama. Mountains. Red arches. The occasional evergreen—with your AC cranked down low. In John Sedgwick’s book, however, one learns what it was like to traverse that terrain as a railroad builder, including the workers themselves.

Sedgwick traces the lives and work of two men—Strong erecting the Santa Fe and Palmer, the Rio Grande—who make “river to the sea” travel possible beginning in the late 1880s. This journey includes side trips by way of chapters devoted, for example, to the beloved Harvey House hotels, the first chain of its kind to provide bed, beverage, and breakfast along the way. Always, however, Sedgwick returns to the struggle these two men mount against the elements, terrain, and government (state and federal) but mostly against each other, to open up the West to the established civilization in the East. It is quite a ride, and Sedgwick ensures that you do not miss a minute of it.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Diana Athill's  Somewhere Towards the End
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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
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S. J. Raphael

MY Book World

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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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Winfrey Takes on Trauma

2/11/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
That a majority of women do not wish for any important change in their social and civil condition, merely proves that they are the unreflecting slaves of custom.
Lydia M. Child
Author of Hobomok: A Tale of Early Times
Born February 11, 1802
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L. M. Child

My Book World

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Perry, Bruce D. and Oprah Winfrey. What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing. New York: Flatiron, 2021.

As the subtitle suggests, Perry and Winfrey exchange ideas concerning childhood trauma. Her words are represented by a pale blue font, and his are in black, making the dialogue more obvious. I’ve read other books about how childhood trauma affects adults in later life, if the trauma is not dealt with in a satisfactory way. I know from my own life that this is true. But this book takes my understanding a bit farther. I now come to realize that the child is both vulnerable to trauma but, under the right circumstances (therapeutic), also resilient.

​Dr. Perry’s expertise in neuroscience helps expand our understanding of how the brain works. Therapy can help a traumatized child or adult, but the therapist must meet the child at his or her level of brain development. Perry tells the story of one boy whose brain is still functioning at the brainstem level, but he’s older than that chronologically. Oprah courageously shares with readers her lifelong struggle to come to terms with abuse she suffered as a young child. Both writers brought me to tears at several times throughout the book. Oprah tells a story of when she is on a movie set, and the director shoots a scene in which she must tuck in a child at night. They must do the take several times, because Oprah keeps going at the situation as if she’s making the bed. The director must finally demonstrate what he means, and Oprah realizes no one ever tucked her in as a child. She had no idea how to do it.

The book’s closure involves Oprah sharing with readers how she finally forgives her mother and also resolves other issues on the woman’s deathbed. We all feel the sense of relief and catharsis that Winfrey feels. She had actually been on her way back to California, when she realized she must return to her mother and end things properly. A real act of courage, which, in reading this book, may help others to do the same. When we stop asking “What’s wrong with you?” and instead ask, “What happened to you?” we, as a society, may be in a better position to help our children and adult children to cope with their lives. I don’t say this often: a must read.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Jeanine Cummins's American Dirt--An Oprah Book Club Recipient
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Good Habits, One Atom at A Time

12/17/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
​William Arthur Ward
Author of Fountains of Faith
​Born December 16, 1921
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W. A. Ward

My Book World

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Clear, James. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. New York: Avery, 2018.

A great book for helping a person to form good habits and break old ones. Clear says you want to make your good habits “obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying” (253), and you want to make your bad habits “invisible, unattractive, hard, and unsatisfying” (253). Clear states all along “This is a continuous process. There is no finish line. There is no permanent solution.”
 
By way of example, I kept forgetting to take a dosage of over-the-counter digestive at noon until I cut out the brand name and put it in my noon pill container. I kept the reminder there until I made the habit of taking it without an obvious cue. Only a small example, but I believe this book will make a good handbook for forming good habits and abolishing the bad. 

​Next Post: January 4, 2022 | Next 'My Book World' January 14, 2022 | Margaret Hill McCarter's  A Master’s Degree
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A Writer's Wit: Margaret Mead

12/16/2021

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Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have.
​Margaret Mead
Author of Blackberry Winter
Born December 16, 1901
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M. Mead
TOMORROW: My Book World | James Clear's Atomic Habits
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Is 'Midnight' Too Late?

12/10/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
The intricacies, the problems, the trials and tribulations in relationships inspire me to give words to people's journeys.
​Umera Ahmed
Author of Aabe Hayat
Born December 10, 1976
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U. Ahmed

My Book World

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Schiff, Adam. Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could. New York: Random, 2021.

If one followed the two impeachment hearings of ex-president Trump, one became quite well acquainted with the rhetorical skills of Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA), who led that trial. And one will recognize much of the material he includes in this book but also much, much more. One gets an inside view of what he experienced to reach that point where Trump needed to be impeached. He recreates important scenes on the floor in public; he recreates scenes out of view as he confers with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders. Reading his account fills out one’s view if you only watched it on TV, especially if your viewing was spotty. Most important, however, is the revelation of Adam Schiff’s character. Into his narrative are woven personal anecdotes about family members, congressional staff members, and other personalities. These reveal a wholly human and humane person who would make a great speaker of the house or president, should he desire to run.

​NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | James Clear's Atomic Habits
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Jobs for Women on 'Maiden Voyages'

11/19/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
Sloppy language leads to sloppy thought, and sloppy thought to sloppy legislation. 
​Dick Cavett
Author of Brief Encounters: Conversations, Magic Moments, and Assorted Hijinks
Born November 19, 1936
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D. Cavett

My Book World

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Evans, Siân. Maiden Voyages: Magnificent Ocean Liners and the women Who Traveled and Worked Aboard Them. New York: St. Martin’s, 2020.

This is an interesting book in which Welsh author Evans focuses on thirteen women (some famous, some not) in the early twentieth century who make careers on the seas. Mostly by way of working on lines such as the White Star and Cunard, these women toil as conductresses, stewardesses, and nurses, sometimes rising to supervisory positions. During an era when women are not encouraged or even allowed to work outside a domestic situation, these women serve as pioneers who earn good salaries and are able to support families back home in the UK, where the man of the household, say, has been lost to war. Of course, their success is hard won, and it is only a beginning, but indeed there must be a thread that connects them to airline hostesses and to female astronauts such as Sally Ride. A quick but meaningful read. 

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Timothy Snyder's  The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America
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A Writer's Wit: Simon Winchester

9/28/2021

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Nature is not evil. The world occasionally shrugs its shoulders, and people get knocked off. The earth, for geological reasons that are well known, is a fairly risky place to live.
​Simon Winchester
Author of Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World
Born September 28, 1944
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S. Winchester
FRIDAY: My Book World | Amburn Ellis's Subterranean Kerouac
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Rise and Fall of an Institution

9/10/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
AIDS and malaria and TB are national security issues. A worldwide program to get a start on dealing with these issues would cost about $25 billion . . . . It's, what, a few months in Iraq. 
​Jared Diamond
Author of Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change
Born September 10, 1937
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J. Diamond

My Book World

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Leonnig, Carol. Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service. New York: Random, 2021.

This book is one of the most fascinating contemporary reads to emerge in a long time. Leonnig, a distinguished Washington Post reporter, delves into the 155-year history of the United States Secret Service—the agency designed primarily to keep the president and family safe. She brings to light its early history: Within a period of thirty-six years, the U.S. experiences three presidential assassinations. Lincoln. Garfield. McKinley. Following Lincoln’s death, the Service is established with minimal or feeble funding. After the third assassination, the congress still refuses to provide additional protection, not wanting the president to be treated like royalty. When Kennedy is assassinated, the congress ultimately realizes it must provide more resources for the Secret Service. And presidents must adjust their thinking. Kennedy may, in part, have contributed to his own death by not adhering to the Service’s request that he not get as close to crowds as he liked. And also by not riding in an open car and by not allowing agents to stand on the rear bumper of his limo.
 
Leonnig explores subsequent presidencies to inform readers in great detail about each administration since: Ford’s two close calls. Reagan’s near-death attack. How the Service erodes during Bush’s and Clinton’s administrations. How the Service is pushed beyond its capabilities during Obama’s era when threats and attempts on him rise exponentially and when two different “jumpers” leap over the White House fence, one of them actually coming within feet of the Obama family’s living quarters. The author informs us of the unrest within the Service: the frequent change of leadership, the history of good old boy networks that reward relationships instead of meritorious service. She tells of the scandals that rock the service, including details of the one in Cartagena where at least ten agents become extremely drunk and involve themselves with prostitutes. Her conclusion: many problems still exist. The agency needs a complete restructuring, much more funding, and a coordinated effort to heartily renew its mission of always putting the lives of the president and family and other figures ahead of lives of agents sworn to protect them. Until these things occur, the Secret Service will remain stretched beyond its capabilities and perhaps remain a second-rate organization.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Reinaldo Arenas's The Doorman
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Cheever: Master of Suburbia & More

8/27/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
Inside every adult male is a denied little boy.
​Nancy Friday
Author of Women on Top
Born August 27, 1933
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N. Friday

My Book World

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Cheever, John. The Stories of John Cheever. New York: Knopf, 1978. 

After perusing Cheever’s letters, I felt inspired to read his sixty-one collected stories (almost 700 pages)—a compendium I had previously spurned because I had only read his early stories. Mistake. And I withdraw what I said in print in the past about Cheever’s short stories being of less value than his novels. However, I believe his collection does present an interesting profile. His early ones, indeed, are less developed, less interesting, at least, to me. The middle ones and most of the later ones remain his meatiest stories. Cheever almost exclusively writes about life in New York City and its suburbs (Bullet Park, Shady Oaks). Most of his long list of characters are adorned with Anglo-Saxon (or Anglo-Saxon sounding) names or made-up names of that ilk for symbolic purposes; if he uses a foreign name, he has something in mind (Boulanger, the French housemaid). Among the A-S names: Pommeroy, Westcott, Hartley, Tennyson, Hollis, ad nauseam—all giving voice to his own cultural dna or the heritage of New England. Some of the suburban stories become a bit pat. Most involve a man and a wife, who, to some degree, love one another, but one or the other is unhappy with this happy marriage—three to five loveable but often invisible children. All involve riding trains to the city, driving station wagons over narrow asphalt roads to summer vacations in Maine or the mountains. People who smoke and drink too much and really don’t care.
 
But! These must have been the very stories that the New Yorker wished to publish because Cheever certainly gave them what they wanted. For a time Cheever and family live in Rome, Italy, and it is that experience that gives brilliance to some of his most interesting and creative stories. In his letters, Cheever reveals that their family brings back to the U.S. a young Italian woman who works for the Cheevers. In “Clementina,” he brings this relationship to life by way of fiction, and the result is stunning. Cheever’s suburban world is now seen through the eyes of a poor Italian domestic who both loves and detests what she witnesses in suburbia. Cheever really seems to occupy her point of view. Likewise, “Boy in Rome,” is a lovely wandering story with a wonderful poetic refrain about “being loved enough.” Cheever sees Rome with eyes that have become so jaundiced by suburban America that the story is somehow crisper than some of his domestic narratives. He’s forced to observe and judge more keenly because of the environment’s apparent strangeness. A lesson to all writers: get out of your own backyard if you can, and see what happens to your fiction. Anyone writing short stories could benefit from reading these gems, mostly because it may remove you from your current world, and he shows you how to do it: be a keen observer no matter the setting; write what you know; and have fun skewering human nature if you can.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Mikita Brottman's Couple Found Slain
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A Writer's Wit: Charles M. Blow

8/11/2021

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I write a lot about disadvantaged people, particularly vulnerable children, because I feel that that's who I was. That is familiar terrain for me. And I try to write about things that are very close to me because I want people to feel the passion that I have for the subject.
​Charles M. Blow
Author of The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto
Born August 11, 1970
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C. M. Blow
FRIDAY: My Book World | Pablo Neruda's Residence on Earth
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A 'Vixen' and Her Fox

8/6/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
When I was writing The Windup Girl and Ship Breaker, I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories.
​Paolo Bacigalupi
Author of The Windup Girl
Born August 6, 1972
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P. Bacigalupi

My Book World

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Raven, Catherine. Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship. New York: Spiegal and Grau, 2021.

A woman lives in a blue steel-roofed house she builds in an area of western U.S. wilderness that is at least thirty minutes from any burg that might be called civilized. With a PhD in biology, the woman lives in her crude dwelling year round and teaches at nearby schools. And she lives alone. Only she isn’t really. She names two cedar trees on her property Gin and Tonic. She names magpies, one of whom, in a strange scenario, will give up her life on behalf . . . well, that’s a spoiler . . . you will want to discover that tale on your own.
 
This woman, the author, is befriended by a fox, a red fox, a species whose adult male weighs no more than six pounds, and must survive, as parable and history tell us, by their wits and cunning. She often reads to Fox (no article, a no-name unlike her other friends) on his mostly daily trips to her property about four in the afternoon. First, she reads to him from St. Ex’s (Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s) The Little Prince. And later, Moby Dick. He seems to be lulled or convinced that she is one of him by the way she does not talk down to him or speak baby talk. He even receives his own sections of the book in which author Raven encourages him to give voice to his point of view (he calls her Hurricane Hands for occasionally extravagant nonverbal communication). 
 
Spoiler: Hurricane Hands loses Fox twice, once in the middle of the book when she sees a mangy dead fox, and once at the end (you know it will happen). Here is the magical portrayal of her mistaken conclusion, when, at one twilight, Fox parades his four kits, the ultimate act of trust, in front of the author:
“In the middle of all that confusion of kits, one furry orange animal was dancing on a boulder. I don’t ever need to be happier than I was at that moment when I realized Fox was alive. On the hillside where he was dancing, rivulets rained down from a carnelian cliff and flowed through round-stemmed sedges, not so different from a stretch of the Wonderland Trail that I used to cross on my way to Indian Bar. Those subalpine meadows spread out in my minds’ [mind’s?] eye, and I remembered bending down to pull salamanders out of ice-cold brooks. When it was too dark to see Fox, even through binoculars, I sat back in my chair, and imagined him dancing all the way back to his den. I had just learned for certain that one fox was not the same as the rest” (161)
Near the end of the book, the author, who has thought so highly of Fox, makes an error by planting a little cactus near her front door where Fox usually lies when he visits. The next time he stops by he says, “Quah,” his one-word vocabulary, holds up his paw, then drops it and catches a toenail on the edge of the plant, casting her a look over his back as he retreats. She transplants the cactus again, and Fox thanks her the next day by lying down. Raven tells us that if we wanted to, we could tame or domesticate foxes within four or five generations. But we shouldn’t. Instead, if each of us were to have such an uncommon friendship with just one non-domesticated animal, the world would be transformed to one where loneliness would become obsolete and the natural world would flourish.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | TBD
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Cheever's Son Brings Father's Letters Alive

6/25/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
Books are something social—a writer speaking to a reader—so I think making the reading of a book the center of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea.
​Yann Martel
Author of Life of Pi
Born June 25, 1963
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Y. Martel

My Book World

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Cheever, Benjamin, Ed. The Letters of John Cheever. New York: Simon, 1988.

This collection of letters from the 1930s to 1982 is as much about the editor, John Cheever’s eldest son, as it is about the senior writer. So many times in reading a compendium of letters, one is left alone to solve certain puzzles the letters may contain. For most letters Benjamin Cheever glosses events, dates, but most important, personalities, and by doing so he allows readers a deeper view into his father’s letters, his father’s life, the life of their family: John Cheever’s wife, Mary; daughter Susan, Benjamin, and a second son Fred (born Federico in Italy).
 
Having read Cheever’s journals some years ago, I again encountered his wicked wit, in which he slices humanity a new asshole but also a humane man who loves that very flawed humanity and is kind enough to portray his characters that way. For the wicked sense of humor: “About a month ago Mary took a job teaching English at Sarah Lawrence two days a week and so she journeys out to Bronxville on Tuesday and Fridays and comes home with a briefcase full of themes written by young ladies named Nooky and Pussy” (124).

Or this, with a scintilla of rage: “I got back to work on the book about a month ago, but was dealt some crushing financial blows three weeks later and now I’m back in the short story business. I want to write short stories like I want to fuck a chicken” (125).

And a sweet cat story: “The cat, after your leaving him, seemed not certain of his character or his place and we changed his name to Delmore which immediately made him more vivid. The first sign of his vividness came when he dumped a load in a Kleenex box while I was suffering from a cold. During a paroxysm of sneezing I grabbed for some kleenex [sic]. I shall not overlook my own failures in this tale but when I got the cat shit off my face and the ceiling I took Delmore to the kitchen door and drop-kicked him into the clothesyard” (235).

But ultimately, as I said, Cheever loves humanity and declares as much by way of a Time magazine interview chronicling his career: “My sense of literature is a sense of giving not diminishment. I know almost no pleasure greater than having a piece of fiction draw together disparate incidents so that they relate to one another and confirm that feeling that life itself is a creative process, that one thing is put purposefully upon another, that what is lost in one encounter is replenished in the next, and the we possess some power to make sense of what takes place” (240). 

Now for the sex part of this profile: Editor Ben, eldest son to Cheever, discovers that his father is not bisexually bicurious in a furtive, shameful sort of way but has had sexual-emotional relationships with many different men over his lifetime. Cheever’s letters attest to having done the deed with (grad student of Cheever’s) Allan Gurganus (about his son’s age) and photographer Walker Evans about whom he tells this story: “When I was twenty-one Walker Evans invited me to spend the night at his apartment. I said yes. I dropped my clothes (Brooks). He hung his (also Brooks) neatly in a closet. When I asked him how to do it he seemed rather put off. He had an enormous cock that showed only the most fleeting signs of life. I was ravening. I came all over the sheets, the Le Corbusier chair, the Matisse Lithograph and hit him under the chin. I gave up at around three, dressed and spent the rest of the night on a park bench near the river” (304).
 
I must say that I admire John Cheever’s zest for life, an enthusiasm he did not relinquish until the day he died. And even then?

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre
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The Horizontal Near Southwest

5/21/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
​Alexander Pope
Author of The Rape of the Lock
​Born May 21, 1688
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A. Pope

My Book World

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Flores, Dan. The Horizontal Yellow: Nature and History in the Near Southwest. Albuquerque: U of NM Press.

First of all, I love that Flores takes possession of this subject right away with the term, “Near Southwest”—a region stretching from eastern Louisiana and including all of Texas and New Mexico. I come over twenty years late to reading this elegantly scripted book about the area’s ecology, but the ideas he expresses here seem to gain urgency as time passes. Flores alternates sections of family history (French and Spanish) and other histories with first-hand accounts of living, say, on the Llano Estacado, as well as poetic and lyrical sections of fiction to bring alive said histories.

Flores is always on the move. After advanced schooling at Texas A&M, he explores, to mention a few places, the Chihuahuan desert, the Southern Plains of Texas (Llano Estacado or Steaked Plains), Abiquiu, New Mexico—finally lighting in Montana. But the Horizontal Yellow of which he speaks is the once real, now metaphorical, wave of yellowing grasses that cover what locals call, with a certain inelegance, the South Plains. It is where he builds a primitive place to live in Yellow House Canyon, about thirty minutes from where he teaches at the local university. It is where he lives with two wolf-dog hybrids as their alpha male (a role he doesn’t particularly relish; it’s the critters’ idea). It is a place remaining in his heart as he makes his home up north, where he can establish and retain a closeness to nature that the Texas South Plains has mostly expunged from its existence. His is an admired life but one I’m not sure I could pursue myself. I adore my life in town—Internet, TV, central heat and air—a bit too much.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Winston Groom's A Storm in Flanders
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Master of Go Go Go

4/30/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.
​Sir John Lubbock
Author of The Pleasures of Life
Born April 30, 1834
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Sir J. Lubbock

My Book World

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Kawabata, Yasunari. The Master of Go. Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker. New York: Vintage, 1972 (1951).

Western readers should probably read more eastern literature, myself included; it would give us a broader view of the world. Wikipedia defines the game of Go in this manner: “Go is an abstract strategy board game for two players in which the aim is to surround more territory than the opponent. The game was invented in China more than 2,500 years ago and is believed to be the oldest board game continuously played to the present day.” In this book (hybrid of novel and nonfiction), the game has moved to Japan. For Kawabata the game of Go provides a wonderful extended metaphor for one man’s life. Shusai, Master of Go, spends time toward the end of his life in battle with a player named Otaké, a fine player but hypochondrial man. The game moves from venue to venue, where players may take hours to decide a play, where weeks may pass before the continuation of the game. There are end notes that help to explain the game. A brief but head-spinning read.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Richard Ellmann's Oscar Wilde
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