Picked up Confessions of a Shopaholic at the library and it was a lot of fun to read - I think I had it done in two days. Candy.
Also picked up Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, which I've just started. Very readable so far, not one of those biographies where you start hoping there's a lot of pictures. Although pictures would be great, too.
books, books, books
-
mood swung
- Posts: 6908
- Joined: Thu Jun 05, 2003 3:59 pm
- Location: out looking for my tribe
- Contact:
-
strangerinthehouse
- Posts: 311
- Joined: Sat Jan 15, 2005 2:14 pm
- Location: fort myers florida
Apart from all the college reading(Only two months till Graduation!) I'm working my way through:
Jonathan Ames great second novel The Extra Man
He has written extensively on his deviant behavior, one of his Nonfiction pieces is called A W on My P, without necessarily going for shocks.
And Innocent When You Dream the Tom Waits Reader. A collection of his articles, reviews and interviews.
Jonathan Ames great second novel The Extra Man
He has written extensively on his deviant behavior, one of his Nonfiction pieces is called A W on My P, without necessarily going for shocks.
And Innocent When You Dream the Tom Waits Reader. A collection of his articles, reviews and interviews.
Picked up Remainder by Tom McCarthy on the strength of the NYT Book Review. Very interesting, but ultimately rather depressing. A nice companion to the novel Martin Dressler which came out a few years ago and won some book awards. Very different, but some common themes regarding identity and what is 'real'.
Who Wrote the Bible-- Richard Elliot Freeman. Interesting book about the folks who had a hand in writing the Old Testament. This fellow thinks it's all a blending of separate texts, written at different times, by J from Judah, E from Israel, Jeremiah (Deutoronomy), P (for Shiloh priests), and Ezra who put the various pieces together. Reads like a detective story. Really.
Landscape and Memory-- Simon Schama. Really difficult to read (could not finish it). All about how western culture has over the years represented trees, rocks, rivers, wolves etc. in art as reflections of who knows what. I like Schama but sometimes he loses me (I learned a lot about the redwoods though).
Guns, Germs and Steel--Jared Diamond. Re-read this while on vacation. Interesting book by a great writer, but reading it on a beach with balmy breezes can put you to sleep and bring on a nasty tan.
Landscape and Memory-- Simon Schama. Really difficult to read (could not finish it). All about how western culture has over the years represented trees, rocks, rivers, wolves etc. in art as reflections of who knows what. I like Schama but sometimes he loses me (I learned a lot about the redwoods though).
Guns, Germs and Steel--Jared Diamond. Re-read this while on vacation. Interesting book by a great writer, but reading it on a beach with balmy breezes can put you to sleep and bring on a nasty tan.
-
Mechanical Grace
- Posts: 878
- Joined: Thu Sep 18, 2003 12:40 pm
It is absolutely fascinating stuff. Some of the most important and unknown history ever, no matter one's beliefs. But what you've described above (and variations thereof) is pretty much the core of modern biblical scholarship, not just what this guy thinks, no?alexv wrote:This fellow thinks it's all a blending of separate texts, written at different times, by J from Judah, E from Israel, Jeremiah (Deutoronomy), P (for Shiloh priests), and Ezra who put the various pieces together.
It's my first time reading about this particular subject, Mech. The guy is a respected scholar, but he did mention that there was some other views. He's identifying Jeremiah and Ezra; others are not sure. Some think that more than one person wrote the J and E parts. He's pretty much focusing on the Levite priests from Shiloh for E and others are not quite sure. That's why I summarized it as I did. Like you, I find the subject fascinating, and I'm going to follow up with some more reading to get a flavor for how much certainty there is. It is pretty clear, however, that there is ccnsensus on the fact that the books of Moses were written between 900 and 500 B.C. and are a combination of different sources.
-
Mechanical Grace
- Posts: 878
- Joined: Thu Sep 18, 2003 12:40 pm
One of my favourite writers - well worth checking out.
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/ob ... 422617.ece
Michael Dibdin
Creator of Aurelio Zen
Published: 05 April 2007
Michael Dibdin, crime novelist: born Wolverhampton, Staffordshire 21 March 1947; married 1971 Benita Mitbrodt (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1979), 1986 Sybil Sheringham (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1995), 1997 Kathrine Beck; died Seattle, Washington 30 March 2007.
Though brought up in Northern Ireland, the novelist Michael Dibdin was born in Wolverhampton, in the heart of the industrialised "Black Country", generally reckoned to be the stroppiest of English regions. He did not disgrace his birthplace. A maverick with a low boredom threshold, he was never averse to taking risks with his books, often to the disquiet of his agent and publishers (at least two of his novels flopped badly in the United States).
Dibdin wrote clever, and unusual, detective stories, as idiosyncratic in their own way as anything by Peter Dickinson, say, or Sarah Caudwell. His series sleuth was Police Commissioner Aurelio Zen, of the Italian detective force, who started out, in the novel Ratking (1988), as a cypher - "a graceless nothing" in Dibdin's graphic phrase - but who gradually took on flesh and character in subsequent books.
In fact Zen was only created to last for a single book but Ratking, in which Dibdin explored corruption at high levels in Italian society, was not only a popular but also a critical success, gaining the British Crime Writers' Association's prestigious "Gold Dagger" for best mystery in 1988. A sequel was clearly indicated.
Luckily Dibdin had a good few thousand words already written, excised from Ratking. "My agent . . . wanted 50 pages trimmed [from the manuscript]," he revealed some years later:
She said, "You don't need to put in every insight you've ever had about Italy. You can always write another book."
This turned into Aurelio Zen's second outing, Vendetta (1990), in which Dibdin dreamed up an ingenious (and impudent) variation on the "locked room" formula (wealthy businessman is murdered in the remote Sardinian hilltop stronghold he built for himself, the whole event captured on videotape, although the murderer subsequently vanished).
Temperamentally unsuited to cranking out Zen novel after Zen novel, Dibdin, throughout most of his career, rang the fictional changes at regular intervals, turning out excellently oddball mysteries every so often. The Tryst (1989) was a chilling psychological thriller with weird undertones. Dirty Tricks (1991 - initially entitled Fatalities) centred on Oxford, although a thuggish and nasty Oxford, by no means the city of dreaming spires of Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse. In The Dying of the Light (1993) he turned the classic country house whodunit so viciously on its head that it actually alienated some of his readers.
Michael Dibdin was born in 1947 and led a somewhat peripatetic childhood thanks to his father, a physicist and academic, who moved around a lot. He was schooled for a short while in Scotland (where he later remembered an impressive use of the strap), but mainly in Lisburn, County Antrim, before attending Sussex University, where he gained a BA in English Literature in 1968, and then the University of Alberta for an MA, in 1969.
Staying in Canada, he took a variety of jobs, becoming, at one stage, the Acme Painting and Decorating Company. In the mid-1970s he returned to Britain with a wife and child, who then returned to Canada while he travelled to Italy, where he taught English, latterly at the University of Perugia (1982-84).
While in London, and needing money to support his family, Dibdin added to what was at the time (the 1970s) something of a cottage industry by writing a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (1978), in which Holmes took on Jack the Ripper (an idea which had already occurred to the scriptwriting brothers Donald and Derek Ford for their 1965 film A Study of Terror). The book elicited generally excellent reviews, although in later years Dibdin invariably downplayed it - "It sold about 20 copies."
After half a decade in Italy he decided to try again, this time with the rather more original notion of having the poet Robert Browning stalk a murderer in 19th-century Italy, in A Rich Full Death (1986). Again it received good notices in his home country although no sales in the US, where his American publisher turned it down flat.
The subsequent success of Ratking changed his luck and gave him the confidence to carry on writing, now full-time. Gradually his Aurelio Zen novels have built up into a fascinating portrait of modern Italy, in all its (as Dibdin saw it) corrupt glory, Zen himself invariably having to slash his way through the nightmarish jungle of Italian bureaucracy to battle with the "gang of thugs, crooks, murderers and villains" at the very top of the trees.
In 1993 Dibdin relocated to America's Pacific North-West, to Seattle, to be with his future third wife, the writer Kathrine Beck. He had also grown disenchanted with Britain and was intent upon writing novels with a purely American background, in the American idiom.
Dark Spectre (1995), an intense portrait of savage, random violence in his new home, Seattle, was the first fruit of this decision. But he returned to the Zen series, after the novel Medusa (2003), becoming, as he admitted, "rather more interested in him than I've been for a long time".
Dibdin's last book, another Aurelio Zen novel, prophetically called End Games, will be published in July. As well as the CWA "Gold Dagger", he was awarded the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in France in 1994.
Jack Adrian
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Dibdin was a brilliant, fearless writer who took readers to the dark corners of Italian crime, writes Tobias Jones. He could pastiche with the best of them, imitating Agatha Christie or Conan Doyle, but was also a pioneer.
He almost single-handedly invented a genre which is now commonplace: the stylish, literary whodunit. In his own memorable sleuth, the weary Venetian Aurelio Zen, he took crime writing to a new level: taut plots were interspersed with cerebral, and relevant, asides about the history of the peninsula or the mentality of the Mediterranean.
His novels would be the only exhibits needed to prove that fiction contains as much truth as fact. His sentences are often so incisive that they tell you more about Italy than many chapters of a guidebook.
Michael, it's well known, didn't suffer fools, and he could cut his characters down to size with a few choice words. But every time I met him he was generous, ready to offer advice and share jokes as if both of you were undercover subversives in an absurd world.
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/ob ... 422617.ece
Michael Dibdin
Creator of Aurelio Zen
Published: 05 April 2007
Michael Dibdin, crime novelist: born Wolverhampton, Staffordshire 21 March 1947; married 1971 Benita Mitbrodt (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1979), 1986 Sybil Sheringham (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1995), 1997 Kathrine Beck; died Seattle, Washington 30 March 2007.
Though brought up in Northern Ireland, the novelist Michael Dibdin was born in Wolverhampton, in the heart of the industrialised "Black Country", generally reckoned to be the stroppiest of English regions. He did not disgrace his birthplace. A maverick with a low boredom threshold, he was never averse to taking risks with his books, often to the disquiet of his agent and publishers (at least two of his novels flopped badly in the United States).
Dibdin wrote clever, and unusual, detective stories, as idiosyncratic in their own way as anything by Peter Dickinson, say, or Sarah Caudwell. His series sleuth was Police Commissioner Aurelio Zen, of the Italian detective force, who started out, in the novel Ratking (1988), as a cypher - "a graceless nothing" in Dibdin's graphic phrase - but who gradually took on flesh and character in subsequent books.
In fact Zen was only created to last for a single book but Ratking, in which Dibdin explored corruption at high levels in Italian society, was not only a popular but also a critical success, gaining the British Crime Writers' Association's prestigious "Gold Dagger" for best mystery in 1988. A sequel was clearly indicated.
Luckily Dibdin had a good few thousand words already written, excised from Ratking. "My agent . . . wanted 50 pages trimmed [from the manuscript]," he revealed some years later:
She said, "You don't need to put in every insight you've ever had about Italy. You can always write another book."
This turned into Aurelio Zen's second outing, Vendetta (1990), in which Dibdin dreamed up an ingenious (and impudent) variation on the "locked room" formula (wealthy businessman is murdered in the remote Sardinian hilltop stronghold he built for himself, the whole event captured on videotape, although the murderer subsequently vanished).
Temperamentally unsuited to cranking out Zen novel after Zen novel, Dibdin, throughout most of his career, rang the fictional changes at regular intervals, turning out excellently oddball mysteries every so often. The Tryst (1989) was a chilling psychological thriller with weird undertones. Dirty Tricks (1991 - initially entitled Fatalities) centred on Oxford, although a thuggish and nasty Oxford, by no means the city of dreaming spires of Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse. In The Dying of the Light (1993) he turned the classic country house whodunit so viciously on its head that it actually alienated some of his readers.
Michael Dibdin was born in 1947 and led a somewhat peripatetic childhood thanks to his father, a physicist and academic, who moved around a lot. He was schooled for a short while in Scotland (where he later remembered an impressive use of the strap), but mainly in Lisburn, County Antrim, before attending Sussex University, where he gained a BA in English Literature in 1968, and then the University of Alberta for an MA, in 1969.
Staying in Canada, he took a variety of jobs, becoming, at one stage, the Acme Painting and Decorating Company. In the mid-1970s he returned to Britain with a wife and child, who then returned to Canada while he travelled to Italy, where he taught English, latterly at the University of Perugia (1982-84).
While in London, and needing money to support his family, Dibdin added to what was at the time (the 1970s) something of a cottage industry by writing a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (1978), in which Holmes took on Jack the Ripper (an idea which had already occurred to the scriptwriting brothers Donald and Derek Ford for their 1965 film A Study of Terror). The book elicited generally excellent reviews, although in later years Dibdin invariably downplayed it - "It sold about 20 copies."
After half a decade in Italy he decided to try again, this time with the rather more original notion of having the poet Robert Browning stalk a murderer in 19th-century Italy, in A Rich Full Death (1986). Again it received good notices in his home country although no sales in the US, where his American publisher turned it down flat.
The subsequent success of Ratking changed his luck and gave him the confidence to carry on writing, now full-time. Gradually his Aurelio Zen novels have built up into a fascinating portrait of modern Italy, in all its (as Dibdin saw it) corrupt glory, Zen himself invariably having to slash his way through the nightmarish jungle of Italian bureaucracy to battle with the "gang of thugs, crooks, murderers and villains" at the very top of the trees.
In 1993 Dibdin relocated to America's Pacific North-West, to Seattle, to be with his future third wife, the writer Kathrine Beck. He had also grown disenchanted with Britain and was intent upon writing novels with a purely American background, in the American idiom.
Dark Spectre (1995), an intense portrait of savage, random violence in his new home, Seattle, was the first fruit of this decision. But he returned to the Zen series, after the novel Medusa (2003), becoming, as he admitted, "rather more interested in him than I've been for a long time".
Dibdin's last book, another Aurelio Zen novel, prophetically called End Games, will be published in July. As well as the CWA "Gold Dagger", he was awarded the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in France in 1994.
Jack Adrian
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Dibdin was a brilliant, fearless writer who took readers to the dark corners of Italian crime, writes Tobias Jones. He could pastiche with the best of them, imitating Agatha Christie or Conan Doyle, but was also a pioneer.
He almost single-handedly invented a genre which is now commonplace: the stylish, literary whodunit. In his own memorable sleuth, the weary Venetian Aurelio Zen, he took crime writing to a new level: taut plots were interspersed with cerebral, and relevant, asides about the history of the peninsula or the mentality of the Mediterranean.
His novels would be the only exhibits needed to prove that fiction contains as much truth as fact. His sentences are often so incisive that they tell you more about Italy than many chapters of a guidebook.
Michael, it's well known, didn't suffer fools, and he could cut his characters down to size with a few choice words. But every time I met him he was generous, ready to offer advice and share jokes as if both of you were undercover subversives in an absurd world.
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
In my haste to post I forgot to add a comment. I saw Micheal do a reading here in Dublin in 2003. In the bar afterwards I hovered to get a book signed . He did so , with much sighing etc. He did ask for my name for the dedication but still was rather dismissive in his attitude. I didn't mind , being rather glad that he seemed so in tune with his Aurelio Zen character.Michael (Dibden) , it's well known, didn't suffer fools,
He never really broke through to the 'airport novel' brigade - he was just too good for that. A sign of that was when I saw a pile of his books remaindered in a shop at c.IR£5 - the entire bundle were autographed on the title page.
-
invisible Pole
- Posts: 2228
- Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 2:20 pm
- Location: Poland
It's excellent. It's like a stripped down version of one of his more usual novels. Those usually work if you get into the whole mood, accepting the ponderous pace, alliteration etc. In this case a narrative is firmly maintained and the whole thing belts along.Anyone read Christine Falls,
I saw John/Benjamin doing a reading from this book last Autumn. In the q & a afterwards he told of how it had originated in a script for a unmade TV show/series. He had written it in a matter of months , as opposed to the years he spends on his other novels. He said all this in a matter of fact way , confident in his working methods. Some find him rather condescending but I detected a certain amount of self-mocking in his delivery. The audience I was in, mostly female, were queasily congratulatory in tone which he seemed to find annoying.
My question addressed the whole matter of his use of a 'open pseudonym' for this book. Graham Greene never did , I pointed out, preferring to classify his books as 'entertainments' and 'serious novels'. I asked John is he felt he was imposing a assumption on the reader by adopting a pseudonym. He replied by first joking that he never could work out the difference between Greene's books , except that some had priests and some didn't. He then rambled on about maybe I had a point and he'd never really thought about it etc. In the signing session later ( he signed 'BB aka John Banville') he thanked me for the question and said maybe he had been a bit harsh on Greene.
And that's enough name dropping for today. I'll shatter any notions of sophistication I may have assumed by saying I'm looking forward to seeing Will Ferrell in Blades Of Glory this evening.
Been on a Shakespeare kick lately, not reading his stuff, mind you, just stuff about him, which is a lot easier.
Got Park Honan's recent biography "Shakespeare, A Life". LIke all Shake bios it has to find a way to fill the pages with info since the man himself is notoriously elusive. Honan's great at this, and he tells you everything you want to know, and more, about Stratford, his father, deer poaching, the Ardens etc. He is also a convert to the Lost Years theory that Shakespeare was really Shakshaft for a few years before going to London.
And that compelled me to go back to a book I had read some time ago, Stephen Greenblatt's "Will in the World", to see how his approach compared with Honan's. He, like Honan, had stuff on Hand D (some think Will had a hand, a direct hand in his own hand, in writing a manuscript on Thomas More, along with other hands), but unlike Honan he strayed from the familiar story to speculate on possible motivations for Hamlet and Shylock (death of his son; ruy lopez), the sonnets and more. Greenblatt is really good. I recommend his book more so than Honan's. He's less dry and a better writer.
But the one I really recommend is Ron Rosenbaum's "The Shakespeare Wars". It's a rambling book, more like a collection of essays, but it addresses a number of issues that continue to rock the experts on Will. For example, what do we do with all the different versions of Hamlet and Lear that we have? One "conflated" version; separate and competing versions. Did the man actually revise or were the later versions written by others? And what about Hand D and the lost years theory? And of course the sonnets. Rosenbaum has interviewed a slew of Will scholars and that's a great touch. His journalistic background makes stories come alive. Lots of fun.
I strayed from Will and picked up Nathaniel Philbrick's "Mayflower" and highly recommend it. The first half of the book is spectacular. It makes the Pilgrims' well known story fresh again. It's almost novelistic. Once the initial founders' story is over, and he moves on to the succeeding adventures the book loses a little of its juice. Nevertheless, it's a magnificent effort.
Got Park Honan's recent biography "Shakespeare, A Life". LIke all Shake bios it has to find a way to fill the pages with info since the man himself is notoriously elusive. Honan's great at this, and he tells you everything you want to know, and more, about Stratford, his father, deer poaching, the Ardens etc. He is also a convert to the Lost Years theory that Shakespeare was really Shakshaft for a few years before going to London.
And that compelled me to go back to a book I had read some time ago, Stephen Greenblatt's "Will in the World", to see how his approach compared with Honan's. He, like Honan, had stuff on Hand D (some think Will had a hand, a direct hand in his own hand, in writing a manuscript on Thomas More, along with other hands), but unlike Honan he strayed from the familiar story to speculate on possible motivations for Hamlet and Shylock (death of his son; ruy lopez), the sonnets and more. Greenblatt is really good. I recommend his book more so than Honan's. He's less dry and a better writer.
But the one I really recommend is Ron Rosenbaum's "The Shakespeare Wars". It's a rambling book, more like a collection of essays, but it addresses a number of issues that continue to rock the experts on Will. For example, what do we do with all the different versions of Hamlet and Lear that we have? One "conflated" version; separate and competing versions. Did the man actually revise or were the later versions written by others? And what about Hand D and the lost years theory? And of course the sonnets. Rosenbaum has interviewed a slew of Will scholars and that's a great touch. His journalistic background makes stories come alive. Lots of fun.
I strayed from Will and picked up Nathaniel Philbrick's "Mayflower" and highly recommend it. The first half of the book is spectacular. It makes the Pilgrims' well known story fresh again. It's almost novelistic. Once the initial founders' story is over, and he moves on to the succeeding adventures the book loses a little of its juice. Nevertheless, it's a magnificent effort.
-
miss buenos aires
- Posts: 2055
- Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2003 7:15 am
- Location: jcnj
- Contact:
I also loved "Will in the World." Lots of "Shakespeare probably would have known about this, so I'll posit it as an inspiration." You end up learning a lot of general history, almost alll of which I've forgotten.
Found a pretty cool-looking website for trading books: http://www.bookmooch.com. Perfect for people like me who give books away as soon as we are done reading them...
Found a pretty cool-looking website for trading books: http://www.bookmooch.com. Perfect for people like me who give books away as soon as we are done reading them...
-
invisible Pole
- Posts: 2228
- Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 2:20 pm
- Location: Poland
And it's getting very good reviews in Poland (it's just been released here).johnfoyle wrote:It's excellent. It's like a stripped down version of one of his more usual novels. Those usually work if you get into the whole mood, accepting the ponderous pace, alliteration etc. In this case a narrative is firmly maintained and the whole thing belts along.Anyone read Christine Falls,
Thanks for the story, john. Funny quote about Greene's books.
If you don't know what is wrong with me
Then you don't know what you've missed
Then you don't know what you've missed
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
then keep an eye out for episode two of the latest series of dr Who, as it features Will and the lost play Love's Labour's Win, with three witches (aha!) to blame for its loss. Shakespeare was miscast, of course, but it was fun all the same.alexv wrote:Been on a Shakespeare kick lately
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
-
ReadyToHearTheWorst
- Posts: 956
- Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2003 5:44 am
- Location: uk
Recent holiday fare:
Philip K Dick - Ubik
Imagine we could converse with Mr Dick's half life. We might tell him of 2007, of the ubiquotous personal computer and the internet with it's port scanning Hackers, Spybots, Trojans and identity fraud; of combatant Firewalls, Anti-Virus software and constant security alerts.
What might he say?
"I'm a pre-cog, go me, woo ooh!" or
'"Are the off-world colonies safe?" or
"Can you stop the guy next to me whistling the theme to Steamboat Bill?"
How might we reply?
"Oh Yeah? So tell me, who's gonna collect from all of those coin operated domestic appliances?" or
"Get real!" or
"Tell him that Micky Mouse has been corrupted by Arab supremacists"
Sebastian Faulks - Birdsong
Wow. At times I felt I was on and then under the fields of the Somme.
James Ellroy - Black Dahlia
Bucky Bleachert was everything an LAPD Detective should be (he might even have had clocks on his socks).
A noirish fictionalised look at a real life unsolved crime, taking the interesting angle that the official record may not tell the whole truth, that the murderer was perhaps identified and justice (of a sort) meted out 'privately'.
Not so much serche la femme as serche la famille de disfunctional.
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
I think our very own ice nine likes this book. I do too.
Philip K Dick - Ubik
Imagine we could converse with Mr Dick's half life. We might tell him of 2007, of the ubiquotous personal computer and the internet with it's port scanning Hackers, Spybots, Trojans and identity fraud; of combatant Firewalls, Anti-Virus software and constant security alerts.
What might he say?
"I'm a pre-cog, go me, woo ooh!" or
'"Are the off-world colonies safe?" or
"Can you stop the guy next to me whistling the theme to Steamboat Bill?"
How might we reply?
"Oh Yeah? So tell me, who's gonna collect from all of those coin operated domestic appliances?" or
"Get real!" or
"Tell him that Micky Mouse has been corrupted by Arab supremacists"
Sebastian Faulks - Birdsong
Wow. At times I felt I was on and then under the fields of the Somme.
James Ellroy - Black Dahlia
Bucky Bleachert was everything an LAPD Detective should be (he might even have had clocks on his socks).
A noirish fictionalised look at a real life unsolved crime, taking the interesting angle that the official record may not tell the whole truth, that the murderer was perhaps identified and justice (of a sort) meted out 'privately'.
Not so much serche la femme as serche la famille de disfunctional.
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
I think our very own ice nine likes this book. I do too.
"I'm the Rock and Roll Scrabble champion"
To tell you the truth, I've only read two Vonnegut books. When I first joined this board I was reading the book and I felt 'ice nine' was as good as any other name I could have come up with. If you liked CC you should try Vonnegut's debut novel, The Sirens of Titan. Debut novels, like debut albums, give a good indication of any future projects.
I just picked up High Fidelty by Hornby. I'll begin it just as soon as I finish Children of Men.
I just picked up High Fidelty by Hornby. I'll begin it just as soon as I finish Children of Men.
It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think that you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt
- M. Twain
- M. Twain
Tennessee Williams: The Notebooks--Highly recommended. From the 30s to the 70s, with a few years break in between, he kept a continuing diary. The editor does a great job of incorporating annotations to keep the reader up to date on all the references. Fascinating. Because he started so young, long before fame arrived, the journals are raw and not at all self-conscious. You get the real person, and in his case it's an extraordinarily sensitive, screwed up homosexual male from a crazed family whose life is turned over to writing, sex (extreme promiscuity would be an understatement), obsessive travelling, drinking and pills, in pretty much that order. Gems abound. Here are some snippets on just three topics: drinking and driving; drugging and flying; and the poetry of the cruise.
Driving and drinking.
Williams to his agent (1951):
I smashed up the new car, the Jaguar. I was driving North, intending to spend some weeks on the Costa Brava... About one hundred miles out of Roma I became very nervous. I took a couple--or was it three-- stiff drinks from a thermos I had with me, and the first thing I knew there was a terrific crash! The car had gone into a tree at 70 miles an hour!...One side was virtually demolished...It was amazing that I was not seriously injured. My portable typewriter flew out of the backseat and landed on my head. Only a small cut... but the typewriter badly damaged....
Journal Entry July 1952 (Rome):
Smashed the car again yesterday--hit a concrete post in the Villa Borghese. But driving slowly and only the fender was smashed. However, I'm worried about my reflexes or eyesight. The right eye is getting undependable.
Noel Coward in his diary (August 1952):
I dined with Tennessee and we drove out along the Appian Way...lovely except for the horror of T's driving. I cannot imagine how he got a license--he admits cheerfully that he cannot see out of one eye, and cannot drive at all and yet he has a Jaguar. On the way back we ran out of essence...After this we got lost and drove about wildly in several different directions! It was all very light-hearted, although a trifle dangerous...We missed a few trams and buses by inches and finally, at long last, I got to my bed.
Drinks, drugs and flight
A plane trip to Sicily:
I hate flying...we flew from Rome over the Apennines and down to the toe of the boot, during the course of which flight I washed down three quarter grains of phenobarbital with three shots of Cognac. Then, I lit up a cigarette. Hardly was it lighted when Downes turned around in his seat and remarked, "Be careful how you dispose of that cigarette. The plane is highly inflammable." But it seemed more likely that we would go down in water than up in flames, for just at this point the plane entered a region of capricious air currents and began to make surprising dips toward the Bay of Naples
Avery long plane trip
11:45 am. We took off late in a wind. Very rough... I had two and a half Martinis before the take-off... we are supposed to land at 1:05 in Dallas...I hope that I will feel able to fly straight thru to L.A....12:37. Have retired to the lavatory...after a drink may try to read a bit...now we are rocking a bit...2:15, I wonder if they serve drinks in El Paso? or sell it. Not sure if my flask will serve 5 more hours...there was no bar in the El Paso airport nor bottles for sale. However!...I have gone to the lavatory for a nip of my precious elixir, which must be husbanded most prudently now. Debating whether or not I should take a pinkie now. Or save it till I really feel I have to. Rugged!...have decided to take the pinkie in five minutes... One of the worst hour and a half I have ever been through with only about 2 inches of whiskey in the flask and what I thought was 2 and one half hours of flying. God extended his white hand of mercy--Seems that we were actually only one hour out (the seconal did no good--never again take a plane without a full bottle on me!...see you later--after 2 martinis at the airport bar, I trust, and a happy long ride to the hotel, thanking God every inch of the way.
On California cruising:
The Palisades are very amusing...during the long twilights or when the moon is in its brighter phases...a great many solitary figures stroll about them--nature lovers and admirers of the ocean...all of them so deeply moved by beauty that it has actual internal repercussions and they have to retire with amazing frequency to the rest-room...These influences make residence along the Palisades very elevating and would bring out the poet in one less impressionable than I. One might also observe that a love of nature is one of the most enduring passions, as the vast majority of the solitary admirers of the ocean appear to be fairly superannuated, even in the dark of the moon. Matings beneath a palm tree are frequently very suddenly dissolved under the first arc light ... by mutual agreement. My front room window is a fine observation post...once in while wen some intrepid blue-jacket crosses into the park, the palm trees sway and the very earth is shaken. A gregarious instinct suddenly develops in the solitary strollers and the white cap on the dark path is like a candle in the center of many capriciously flittting moths.
When not drinking, writing, drugging, screwing or flying, Tennessee was obsessing about his non-existent illnesses and the specter of a painful protracted death. He was found dead in a hotel in New York. He had choked on the small bell-shaped plastic cap of an eyedrop bottle.
Driving and drinking.
Williams to his agent (1951):
I smashed up the new car, the Jaguar. I was driving North, intending to spend some weeks on the Costa Brava... About one hundred miles out of Roma I became very nervous. I took a couple--or was it three-- stiff drinks from a thermos I had with me, and the first thing I knew there was a terrific crash! The car had gone into a tree at 70 miles an hour!...One side was virtually demolished...It was amazing that I was not seriously injured. My portable typewriter flew out of the backseat and landed on my head. Only a small cut... but the typewriter badly damaged....
Journal Entry July 1952 (Rome):
Smashed the car again yesterday--hit a concrete post in the Villa Borghese. But driving slowly and only the fender was smashed. However, I'm worried about my reflexes or eyesight. The right eye is getting undependable.
Noel Coward in his diary (August 1952):
I dined with Tennessee and we drove out along the Appian Way...lovely except for the horror of T's driving. I cannot imagine how he got a license--he admits cheerfully that he cannot see out of one eye, and cannot drive at all and yet he has a Jaguar. On the way back we ran out of essence...After this we got lost and drove about wildly in several different directions! It was all very light-hearted, although a trifle dangerous...We missed a few trams and buses by inches and finally, at long last, I got to my bed.
Drinks, drugs and flight
A plane trip to Sicily:
I hate flying...we flew from Rome over the Apennines and down to the toe of the boot, during the course of which flight I washed down three quarter grains of phenobarbital with three shots of Cognac. Then, I lit up a cigarette. Hardly was it lighted when Downes turned around in his seat and remarked, "Be careful how you dispose of that cigarette. The plane is highly inflammable." But it seemed more likely that we would go down in water than up in flames, for just at this point the plane entered a region of capricious air currents and began to make surprising dips toward the Bay of Naples
Avery long plane trip
11:45 am. We took off late in a wind. Very rough... I had two and a half Martinis before the take-off... we are supposed to land at 1:05 in Dallas...I hope that I will feel able to fly straight thru to L.A....12:37. Have retired to the lavatory...after a drink may try to read a bit...now we are rocking a bit...2:15, I wonder if they serve drinks in El Paso? or sell it. Not sure if my flask will serve 5 more hours...there was no bar in the El Paso airport nor bottles for sale. However!...I have gone to the lavatory for a nip of my precious elixir, which must be husbanded most prudently now. Debating whether or not I should take a pinkie now. Or save it till I really feel I have to. Rugged!...have decided to take the pinkie in five minutes... One of the worst hour and a half I have ever been through with only about 2 inches of whiskey in the flask and what I thought was 2 and one half hours of flying. God extended his white hand of mercy--Seems that we were actually only one hour out (the seconal did no good--never again take a plane without a full bottle on me!...see you later--after 2 martinis at the airport bar, I trust, and a happy long ride to the hotel, thanking God every inch of the way.
On California cruising:
The Palisades are very amusing...during the long twilights or when the moon is in its brighter phases...a great many solitary figures stroll about them--nature lovers and admirers of the ocean...all of them so deeply moved by beauty that it has actual internal repercussions and they have to retire with amazing frequency to the rest-room...These influences make residence along the Palisades very elevating and would bring out the poet in one less impressionable than I. One might also observe that a love of nature is one of the most enduring passions, as the vast majority of the solitary admirers of the ocean appear to be fairly superannuated, even in the dark of the moon. Matings beneath a palm tree are frequently very suddenly dissolved under the first arc light ... by mutual agreement. My front room window is a fine observation post...once in while wen some intrepid blue-jacket crosses into the park, the palm trees sway and the very earth is shaken. A gregarious instinct suddenly develops in the solitary strollers and the white cap on the dark path is like a candle in the center of many capriciously flittting moths.
When not drinking, writing, drugging, screwing or flying, Tennessee was obsessing about his non-existent illnesses and the specter of a painful protracted death. He was found dead in a hotel in New York. He had choked on the small bell-shaped plastic cap of an eyedrop bottle.
-
invisible Pole
- Posts: 2228
- Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 2:20 pm
- Location: Poland
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
-
Mechanical Grace
- Posts: 878
- Joined: Thu Sep 18, 2003 12:40 pm
Now you must promise to read Evelyn Waugh's letters. (Incidentally, HE died sitting on the crapper, on Easter Sunday-- as endings go, a more fitting mix of piety and absurdist pathos could not be conjured.) The volume of letters between him and Nancy Mitford is great, and shorter, but it's out of print and now goes for $45... sheesh. Glad I bought it when it came out.
-
mood swung
- Posts: 6908
- Joined: Thu Jun 05, 2003 3:59 pm
- Location: out looking for my tribe
- Contact:
Mech, I'm hitting the Westport library this weekend and heading for the Waugh (you will not need to mention it a third time).
Mood, I probably spend more time reading than lawyering. I've always loved books. When we left Cuba in the 60s, we were not allowed to take anything of value (here's hoping Fidel's artificial anus is blowing up this very minute), and I caused my parents great grief by insisting on taking two books: Spanish editions of "The Three Musketeers" and "The Last of the Mohicans". They were terrified that we would not be allowed to board the plane.
We landed in Madrid with the clothes on our backs, and the two books. By the time we got to the US, the Dumas was gone, but Mohicans was still with me. I still have it, and it's one posession that I treasure. My father was a great reader and he instilled the passion in me. I've passed it on to my daughter who is unable to go to sleep or eat without reading (unfortunately she keeps rereading "The Devil Wears Prada").
Mood, I probably spend more time reading than lawyering. I've always loved books. When we left Cuba in the 60s, we were not allowed to take anything of value (here's hoping Fidel's artificial anus is blowing up this very minute), and I caused my parents great grief by insisting on taking two books: Spanish editions of "The Three Musketeers" and "The Last of the Mohicans". They were terrified that we would not be allowed to board the plane.
We landed in Madrid with the clothes on our backs, and the two books. By the time we got to the US, the Dumas was gone, but Mohicans was still with me. I still have it, and it's one posession that I treasure. My father was a great reader and he instilled the passion in me. I've passed it on to my daughter who is unable to go to sleep or eat without reading (unfortunately she keeps rereading "The Devil Wears Prada").