The Morgan Library at 36th and Madison in NYC. Nearly my favorite place in the world.
Saturday, January 16, 2021
Watching BookTV is not what it used to be. I depended on these bookish types to speak to other bookish types about their…books.
But now, it’s zoom, zoom, zoom, and it’s harder to stay focused as the audio, the video, the lighting, the odd configurations, the barking dogs in the background all appear, disappear, and reappear at random. ALTHOUGH, it may just me being persnickety.
How. Ev. Er. Today, I watched the former German ambassador to the US, Wolfgang Ischinger talk about the role of diplomacy worldwide. He was exactly what an ambassador should be. It was a wonderful conversation.
I can’t believe I lucked out and clicked on just the right stuff to inaugurate the start of a very pleasant day.
Wolfgang has been in public service all his life. He supports the Paris Climate Agreement, NATO, diplomacy efforts with Russia and China, and stable leadership from the US with regard to world peace, economics, stability, and technology advances.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” Edmond Burke.
Wolfgang is certainly doing his share of goodness. And more.
Till next time.
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Friday, January 15, 2021
I never tire of Alan Bennett’s observations.
And lately I’ve been rewatching his movie series packaged as 4 DVDs in a collection titled The Alan Bennett Collection featuring An Englishman Abroad and including my all time favorite, A Question of Attribution starring Prunella Scales.
And.
One of those movies is about Marcel Proust.
Alan says that Marcel says that a novel takes you inside yourself rather than outside yourself. I’m not sure Marcel was right about that. I immediately thought of four twelve novels in no particular order that took me all over the world:
The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl by Uwe Johnson
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Why I Live at the P.O. by Eudora Welty
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick
Also, I never get tired of listening to Alan Bennett read his work especially The Uncommon Reader.
And finally, for the weekend (even if the Dowager Countess of Grantham doesn't know what a weekend is), I’m well into Hilary Mantel’s Mantel Pieces and loving it.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, January 12, 2021
There are nearly too many books queued up at the ready. Jay Parini’s book on Borges and Me turned out to be too full of cognitive dissonance for me. The book was mostly a coming of age book from 50 years ago rather than about the poet Jorge Luis Borges. Also, Parini, in the 1960s, was in Scotland studying for his thesis and at the same time avoiding the draft for the Vietnam War. He mentions this draft avoidance many times in the book, and I kept expecting him to say in the end, he became a conscientious objector and served somehow, somewhere. But no…He also mentioned the horrible death of his friend in the war. So…
Martin Amis’s book Inside Story was supposed to be a novel, but really it was an historical anecdote about his relationships with Kingsley (his dad), Saul Bellow, and Christopher Hitchens as well as girlfriends and family. To be a writer for Amis seems to be all that he is when actually we know there are other fascinating rhythms of life:
Groucho Marx
Willie Mays
The Second Movement of the Jupiter Symphony
Louie Armstrong’s recording of Potato Head Blues
Swedish movies
Sentimental Education by Flaubert
Marlon Brando
Frank Sinatra
Apples and Pears by Cezanne
The crabs at Sam Wo’s
George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue
Or so says Woody Allen in Manhattan
Also, in today’s Times was a piece about the new Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station and VP Kamala Harris’s photo on the cover of Vogue. Such a variety.
I’m moving on to Hilary Mantel’s Mantel Pieces and possibly a piece of German Chocolate Cake.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, January 6, 2021
Finally. Today.
Something to consider:
Clarity isn’t everything.
It’s the only thing.
Also, a new book is queued up. Life isn’t Everything: Mike Nichols, as Remembered by 150 of His Closest Friends.
And then there are three books to reread and to re-enjoy as winter settles in:
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Mirrors by Eduardo Galeano
I WAS thinking about collecting all the book reviews written by Michiko Kakutani, who wrote literary criticism for the NYT for 38 years. HOWEVER, after reading about how she was fearless, disinterested, and sometimes mean as well as way too powerful, I’m thinking no.
For me, John Updike’s advice on how to review a book remains the gold standard for reviewers. This advice is from his book Picked-Up Pieces from 1977.
1. Try to understand what the authors wished to do, and do not blame them for not achieving what they did not attempt.
2. Provide enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book's prose so the review's readers can form their own impressions.
3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book.
4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.
5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's ouevre or elsewhere.
6. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like.
Till next time.
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Friday, January 1, 2021
Speaking of new year’s resolutions…
Oh. My. Goodness.
Yesterday, I bought carrots and low-fat dip.
Today, I had two cookies and a bag of chips for lunch.
ARGH.
On a MUCH brighter note, I got a lovely new fountain pen for Christmas.
Virginia Woolf wrote with a fountain pen. She also recommended George Eliot’s Middlemarch, which I have just started reading.
Hello 2021.
Till next time.
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