WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Janet Flanner
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Horton Foote
FRI: My Book World | Michael Denneny, On Christopher Street
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WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Janet Flanner THURS: A Writer's Wit | Horton Foote FRI: My Book World | Michael Denneny, On Christopher Street
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MY BOOK WORLDBarnes, Julian. The Sense of an Ending. New York: Knopf, 2011. Quite a tour de force for Barnes to squeeze a lifetime into 163 pages! Makes one wonder why most novels couldn’t do with a bit of streamlining (though not possible with many narratives, to be sure). The first third or so of this novel about Tony Webster is set in his youth: his three mates and a prominent girlfriend who dumps him eventually for one of those friends, Adrian. Then Adrian commits suicide. Barnes writes a brilliant transitional scene which moves readers to his life as an adult: “By now I’d left home, and started work as a trainee in arts administration. Then I met Margaret; we married, and three years later Susie was born. We bought a small house with a large mortgage; I commuted up to London every day. My traineeship turned into a long career. Life went by . . . [A]fter a dozen years Margaret took up with a fellow who ran a restaurant. I didn’t much like him—or his food, for that matter—but then I wouldn’t, would I? Custody of Susie was shared. Happily, she didn’t seem too affected by the breakup; and, as I now realize, I never applied to her my theory of damage” (59). This transition continues for another page and a half until readers begin Part Two: Tony is sixty. He is bequeathed the late Adrian’s diaries by Adrian’s mother, but his wife, Veronica, will not release them to Tony. Why? That’s what the rest of the novel is about. Happy reading! I know it was for me. Not a disappointment either. Coming Next: TUES: A Writer's Wit | Edward Albee WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Janet Flanner THURS: A Writer's Wit | Horton Foote FRI: My Book World | Michael Denneny, On Christopher Street Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending TUES: A Writer's Wit | Edward Albee WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Janet Flanner THURS: A Writer's Wit | Horton Foote Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Elizabeth Moon FRI: My Book World | Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
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WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Gabriel García Márquez THURS: A Writer's Wit | Elizabeth Moon FRI: My Book World | Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending MY BOOK WORLDStadler, Matthew. The Sex Offender. New York: Grove, 2000 (1994). Stadler is a unique and gifted writer. In this 1994 novel, he relates the tale of a thirty-year-old man charged with molesting one of his pupils, a twelve-year-old boy, Dexter. I say “tale,” because the man’s incarceration does not happen as it would in the America we know—with jail time, a trial, and imprisonment or institutionalization or both. No, in this fanciful land (seems European in nature), the former teacher is plopped into therapy. One type is the talking kind conducted with the Doctor-General. Another is an “aversive” type in which he is to associate his love for Dexter with negative stimuli. It doesn’t work, of course. And ironically, the teacher finds another young boy, Hakan, upon whom he lavishes his love. Only this time, as far as I can tell, he does not engage sexually with the youth, only emotionally. And no one ever knows of their relationship! So many “odd” elements to the narrative. The teacher also knows magically how to perform a kind of facelift, an element that figures heavily into the novel’s resolution. His therapist, Doctor-General, is experimenting with the notion of replacing a human’s brain so that one’s impulses become “normal.” But nothing seems normal in this novel. The teacher still loves Dexter and insists that the boy loves him. However, the Doctor-General disabuses him of this notion, informing him that the boy is very unhappy (we have no idea if this is true or not, or why he is unhappy). In the end, the teacher believes he has fooled officials into thinking he is “cured” and hoping for release. Yet they proclaim he is not cured and perform a simple kind of castration on him. Snip snip, like that! And now finally, one understands the cover illustration, as the teacher dresses as a woman to attend an important function. Odd, odd, odd. But a great book because it forces us to consider a subject, that thirty years later, is still taboo. Were the Greeks and Romans “sex offenders,” too, or were they, in some manner, ahead of their time? It’s a notion worth considering, and this satiric look (partially) helps us to see its possibilities. Coming Next: TUES, MAR 5: A Writer's Wit | Leslie Marmon Silko WEDS, MAR 6: A Writer's Wit | Gabriel García Márquez THURS, MAR 7: A Writer's Wit | Elizabeth Moon FRI, MAR 8: My Book World | Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
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FRI: My Book World | Ian McEwan, Saturday TUES, MAR 5: A Writer's Wit | Leslie Marmon Silko WEDS, MAR 6: A Writer's Wit | Gabriel García Márquez THURS, MAR 7: A Writer's Wit | Elizabeth Moon Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Kimball Allen FRI: My Book World | Matthew Stadler, The Sex Offender
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WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Erma Bombeck THURS: A Writer's Wit | Kimball Allen FRI: My Book World | Matthew Stadler, The Sex Offender MY BOOK WORLDMcEwan, Ian. Saturday. New York: Doubleday, 2006. McEwan always places his characters in such precarious but interesting situations. In this novel, an eminent London surgeon witnesses a plane crashing at Heathrow airport—out his bedroom window—early one Saturday morning. He immediately prepares himself to leave the house; he will be needed to help clean up the carnage. At first, one thinks that this event is the inciting event of the novel. It is not, merely foreshadowing (the plane, piloted by two Russians, crashes in foam, and all survive). Later in the morning, the surgeon finds that a street has been blocked off, but he ignores the police and drives to his destination in his expensive Mercedes. There he is sideswiped by a cad and his two buddies, who try to hold him up for damages (a lopped-off side mirror), but it is the cad who has initiated the accident, and so the surgeon refuses, suffering a punch in the chest for his trouble. He notices the cad’s physical characteristics and determines that the man has (what will turn out to be) Huntington’s disease. His conference with the cad softens the young man, and they part. But one realizes, like the proverbial bad penny, the three cads are to surface again. I won’t spoil the ending. I will say that McEwan turns what could have been a maudlin conclusion into one that is both realistic and satisfying literarily. No one character gets off too easily, nor does one suffer too much. A lot like real life for most of us. Coming Next: TUES: A Writer's Wit | Ellen Gilchrist WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Erma Bombeck THURS: A Writer's Wit | Kimball Allen FRI: My Book World | Matthew Stadler, The Sex Offender
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FRI: My Book World | Ian McEwan, Saturday TUES: A Writer's Wit |Ellen Gilchrist WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Erma Bombeck THURS: A Writer's Wit | Kimball Allen Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Susan Brownmiller FRI: My Book World | Ian McEwan, Saturday
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WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Frederick Douglass THURS: A Writer's Wit | Susan Brownmiller FRI: My Book World | Ian McEwan, Saturday MY BOOK WORLDBrown, Christopher. Tropic of Kansas. New York: HarperCollins, 2017. I’ve so enjoyed Christopher Brown’s monthly newsletter in which he examines the environment in which he lives—in and around Austin, Texas. It is thoughtful, well-researched, and often he includes strong photographs demonstrating either positive or negative aspects of the local ecology. It is probably the mark of an excellent writer that (in this case) he can switch from one genre of writing to another. At the same time, I find this novel wanting. Much of this stance may be my fault. I don’t usually read futuristic fiction. I don’t care for fiction where there are too many characters to keep track of (oh, my aging brain). I find myself not caring much about any of them. However, the two main characters—a young man and his half-sister—attempt to make contact with one another after being separated. This dystopian (I think) novel takes place when a vast region in the middle of the country is dubbed the Tropic of Kansas. This facile allusion to Henry Miller’s novel also sets up the extended metaphor of wasteland. (And since I grew up in Kansas, the metaphor is not lost on me—although I could be a bit insulted.) Tania has worked for the government but now is a lone wolf. Her brother, on his own since a child, is a wunderkind of chase and escape. The entire novel is plot driven, alternating Tania’s chapters with those of her brother, Sig. I tend to enjoy novels that are more character driven. Action, action, action—it gets a bit tiring without some reflection on the part of the characters. After all, the United States of America has more or less imploded. A bunch of ragtags are trying to put it back together, and yet no one seems to give much thought to what they are doing. I may be missing the point of Tropic of Kansas, and my apologies to the author if I am. As I once said to my parents when being introduced to a new food, “I’m trying to like it.” Coming Next: TUES: A Writer's Wit | Maureen F. McHugh WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Frederick Douglass THURS: A Writer's Wit | Susan Brownmiller FRI: My Book World | Ian McEwan, Saturday Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Christopher Brown, Tropic of Kansas TUES: A Writer's Wit | Maureen F. McHugh WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Frederick Douglass THURS: A Writer's Wit | Susan Brownmiller Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Martin Buber FRI: My Book World | Christopher Brown, Tropic of Kansas Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Laura Ingalls Wilder THURS: A Writer's Wit | Martin Buber FRI: My Book World | Christopher Brown, Tropic of Kansas MY BOOK WORLDEgan, Jennifer. Manhattan Beach. New York: Scribner, 2017. From the Acknowledgements section of this novel, one may deduce that Egan took up to a decade to produce it. The tome is a historical novel of epic proportions set during WW II, with so much to research, right? A young woman works at a dull job measuring manufactured parts to make sure their sizes are correct. This woman named Anna is bored; rides a bike during her forty-five-minute lunch rather than choke down a sandwich from home with the marrieds, women who belittle her ambitions. She establishes a rapport with her supervisor, however, and with his help, goes on to become a diver, the first woman in New York to don a 250-pound diving suit and repair the skins of warships. Egan’s research makes her underwater scenes some of the most realistically invigorating I’ve ever read. Meanwhile, Anna maintains a home life: a beautiful mother who is a former performer, a somewhat peripatetic father who deserts the family without explanation, and a sister disabled with an unnamed affliction (one might deduce the child is stricken with cerebral palsy), but that the disease is unidentified adds to its mystery, makes the child a wondrous, angel-faced enigma, whom Anna misses achingly when her sister dies. As the father has already disappeared from the scene, her mother moves to her childhood home in Minnesota, leaving Anna the family apartment to herself. A third strand of the novel concerns itself with Anna’s father who crosses paths with a man from the underbelly of New York. Yet these men both maintain at least a superficial appearance of respectability, until the dirty business of doing illegal acts finally destroys them both. To avoid more spoilers, suffice it to say that each man winds up having a profound effect on Anna’s life. A father who leaves to service the war effort with the merchant marines. And the other man, the mystery man little Anna meets in the very first scene of the novel, well, his role is profound, too. The conclusion of the novel, rather than serving as the denouement (neatly tying up loose ends like an Agatha Christie mystery), acts more like a coda (featuring extensions or reelaborations of earlier themes) you might note at the end of a musical composition. It serves more as the logical culmination to the crazed life a young woman lives in the 1940s, at the height of a war altering life worldwide. To me, Manhattan Beach should also be a Pulitzer Prize-winner, like Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (superbly noted for its nonlinear spectacularism). But what do I know. I’m merely a faithful reader of Egan’s work, madly in love with her intelligence, her perfect sentences, her mastery of structure, and most important, her incorruptible and universal understanding of the human condition. Brava! Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Christopher Marlowe WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Laura Ingall's Wilder THURS: A Writer's Wit | Martin Buber FRI: My Book World | Christopher Brown, Tropic of Kansas Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach TUES: A Writer's Wit | Christopher Marlowe WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Laura Ingalls Wilder THURS: A Writer's Wit | Martin Buber Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | S. J. Perelman FRI: My Book World | Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach
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WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Laura Lippman THURS: A Writer's Wit | S. J. Perelman FRI: My Book World | Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach
MY BOOK WORLDStreisand, Barbra. My Name Is Barbra. New York: Viking, 2023. Wow! How do I begin? Full disclosure: I’ve been a fan of Barbra Streisand since 1962 when I was fourteen, and, from the speaker of an AM radio, emanated this crystalline voice. It lifted me across the room like a wonderful fragrance. I thought, God, I’ve got to hear more of her. And so I did. Decades of albums later (most of which I own in one medium or another). I bought both the hardcover ($31) and the Audible version ($61) of this book, so you know I’m serious when I declare I’m a fan. Her work has always cost more than that of other artists, and I’ve always paid it. You get what you pay for, and her case it is great artistry. This memoir might better be subtitled as an autobiography because it covers every minute, every inch of her life—album by album, show or concert by concert, and film by film. At first, I am a bit disconcerted, as I follow along in the hardcover, that she does not read the text word for word. Her prose is quite engaging—rich and varied. But she adds so many asides, creating more of a conversational tone in her book, that I’m grateful for the audio version, as well. It must have taken her months to make the Audible recording, and yet her voice never wavers (except by way of certain emotions); it sounds as if she recorded the 900+ pages (48+ hours) in one smooth session. This woman does nothing by half. And perhaps that is the crux of Streisand’s book: She means to tell her own story her own way, after decades of being misrepresented and misquoted again and again. Myth Number One: Barbra is hard to work with. Nope. She quotes from directors, actors, and other professionals she’s collaborated with that because of her exacting nature, she is a joy to work with. Because she collects discerning individuals around her, she creates a fine synergy, by which the highest quality is sought after by all. Exceptions exist, like the late Ray Stark, producer, to whom Streisand is tied for her first five films. He is a lying, conniving person who cheats her in several ways, and she can’t wait to be free of him. In some ways (creativity mainly), her career does not begin until he’s nowhere near her career. Myth Number Two: Barbra loves to perform. For the first time, I learn that every time she must appear before a live crowd to sing, the experience frightens her to death. She loves performing in the studio, making albums. She is deeply emersed when appearing in or directing a film. Yet, later in her career, she does “conquer her fears,” a line of dialog I borrow from her concert in New York’s Central Park (1967). Over time, she learns to trust her audience, to include them as a collective partner. Myth Number Three: Barbra is a cold b———. You should read all the adoring notes, letters, and reviews that people write. You should hear of the friendships she develops with other actors, directors, musicians, artists, and professionals close to her. Marty, her agent (manager?), at ninety-something, is still with her. Renata, her personal assistant-housekeeper-chef-chauffeur has remained with her for over sixty years. You don’t retain that kind of loyalty by being unkind. Then there is the personal. Barbra confesses (we’ve always guessed) how the loss of her father at an early age affects her entire life. She describes the rocky but loving relationship with a mother who, it turns out, is so jealous of her own daughter’s success that she often turns a cold shoulder to Barbra—even skipping an important performance in Las Vegas to play the slots with her friends. Barbra shares the details of the romances in her life (those whom she loved and those who loved her): Omar Shariff, Marlon Brando, and others not so well known. An entire chapter she devotes to her husband of twenty-five years: (hello, gorgeous) James Brolin. Though she may have had an editor to help her shape the book (what published writer doesn’t?), Streisand’s prose, both conversational and formal at times, is her own. After all, the woman has written screenplay treatments, screenplays, and another book besides. (Songs!) Like everything else she does, Streisand approaches this book with love and exacting detail. If you like her at all, or if you are curious, pony up and either read or listen to the book (or both, as I did). You won’t be disappointed. Oh, and as a bonus, whenever Barbra Streisand explains how a certain album is developed, she includes sound snippets from the tracks to demonstrate what she is talking about. Sublime. Sublime. Sublime. Sit in on the best master class ever! Coming Next: TUES: A Writer's Wit | John Dufresne WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Laura Lippman THURS: A Writer's Wit | S. J. Perelman FRI: My Book World | Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach
FRI: My Book World | Barbra Streisand, My Name Is Barbra
TUES: A Writer's Wit | John Dufresne WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Laura Lippman THURS: A Writer's Wit | S. J. Perelman Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Joe Conason FRI: My Book World | Barbra Streisand, My Name Is Barbra
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Edith Wharton THURS: A Writer's Wit | Joe Conason FRI: My Book World | Barbra Streisand, My Name Is Barbra |
AUTHOR
Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA. See my profile at Author Central:
http://amazon.com/author/rjespers Archives
April 2024
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