I had a poster of Carl Yastrzemski on my wall as a kid. I dreamed of playing left field for the Boston Red Sox and becoming the third Hall of Famer in a row to grace that hallowed space, following Yaz and the immortal Ted Williams in a line of excellence stretching back to before World War II.
Alas, my dreams went up in smoke early. I had a natural affinity for baseball but my physical gifts were average. My desire made up some of the difference but by the time middle school rolled around I was too near sighted and scrawny to even make the baseball team. I switched my competitive gear and turned to track and field, becoming a pretty good long distance runner. But there is a deep pang there that my baseball days ended too early. I played Babe Ruth League but even there I mostly rode pine.
My family would sit on cool summer evenings and watch the Sox lose. The sad history of that squad is widely documented and that is not what this post is about. But the context dictates the mention. I'd had my heart broken at 6 in the 1975 World Series and thumbed through a scrapbook of the 1967 Impossible Dream season that my dad had kept. But none of that dulled the quotidian joy of witnessing the slow unspooling of hot stove drama on a tiny TV.
On nights when the games went too late I would listen in my bed.
Two milestones approached for my favorite player. At the beginning of the 1979 season, both 3,000 hits and 400 home runs seemed in reach. No American League player had ever reached both.
By mid July he'd reached 399 home runs. All of New England held their breath. A group of URI Faculty had rented a bus to go up and see a game. My dad got us tickets and we walked up to the Memorial Union on the URI campus to wait with the rest of the eager Sox fans.
The bus broke down somewhere en route and by the time word got to us it was too late to make it up to Boston. I was crushed. I remember walking home wearing my baseball glove, a glove I still have to this day. My dad put his arm around me and spoke softly to me, telling me he was sorry it had worked out that way. In my memory we went home and watched the game as Yaz parked his 400th. But that might be wrong. He might not have hit it that day...I honestly don't remember. What sticks with me is how good it felt to have my dad's arm around me.
The season wore on and Yaz haltingly raised his hit total. By this point in his career he was over 40. He was a chain smoker. How he was still in the big leagues is a testament to his natural skill. But he was not fun to watch. Labored. But still capable of coming through in the clutch.
Cut to Tuesday, September 11th. I am ten years old. I've started fourth grade. I get home from school. My Uncle Jimmy calls the house and tells me to get my glove ready. He is coming down from Massachusetts to pick me up and bring me to the game. It is already almost 4PM and I can't figure out how we are going to make it to Fenway in time. Yaz has 2,999 hits. The Sox are playing the Yankees. Former Sox ace Luis Tiant is going for the Yanks. It is a script you couldn't have written, set up for Yaz to reach 3,000 against a hated rival.
Jimmy squeals into the driveway in a Honda Prelude, which to me is the height of chic and cool. I run out in my Sox cap and glove and hop in the passenger seat. The speedometer was an LED which I'd never seen at that point. We chatted about the game and life. I looked at the LED. It read 96.
We almost rear-ended a car on Storrow Drive and hurtled Ace Ventura style into a parking spot during the 2nd inning. Yaz had not gotten a hit in his first at-bat which we'd breathlessly listened to on the radio. We hustled from the car to our seats which Jimmy must have murdered someone to get. Directly behind the first base dugout, three or four rows back. I remember vividly that Carlton Fisk was standing in the batter's box when we got to our seats and he seemed like a giant. I've never seen anyone that large to this day.
Yaz went 0-3.
He got number 3,000 the next day.
I just missed each moment. But the moments that I got from those near-misses are as precious to me as what the folks in the seats at Fenway got. And years later my dad and I would cheer from the third base line as Yaz knocked in what would be his final RBI. Impossible Dream, my ass.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Last Call
I was a bartender with a catering company out of Pasadena called The Kitchen For Exploring Foods. This particular gig was a wedding reception held at a museum in Pasadena. It was an outdoor courtyard with cobblestone underfoot and vine covered light brick walls. What happened that evening has burned those visuals in my brain forever but I have blocked out the name of the museum. And what was in a particular glass.
The groom gathered us bartenders before the party to coach us on the liquor he was providing. He was some sort of wine expert or spirit salesman and seemed to be more excited about the drinks than the fact that he'd just gotten married. He seemed to want to drink with us.
I never drank on the job. I knew some of the bartenders did but it just wasn't my thing. So his insistence that I had to sample the rum he'd found just for the occasion that came packaged in round bottles with wicker jackets was mildly annoying. I needed to prep my station and this bore was droning on about the way this particular rum stayed on the back of your tongue and you had to drink it straight and I wasn't to make anyone any mixed drinks with it. They could have it straight but that was it.
Inwardly I made a note to make the first person who came to my bar a margarita with the shit.
His dedication to getting lit seemed to be an indication of the type of crowd we were playing host to. I was stationed in what was probably some sort of sandwich gazebo when the Museum was open. It was a cool late summer night. Perfect weather.
Some weddings you cater are tame, some ragged and wild. This was a strange mix of the two. It was a drinking crowd. And when I say that, what I mean is that they stayed at the bar as opposed to mingling amongst each other. Most weddings people will wander up, get what they need and wander back out in to the maelstrom.
But with these folks you'd have thought there was a flat-screen TV with a big game on. They stayed with me. They drank their drinks and asked for refills which I poured out over the bar into the plastic cups that they didn't bother to throw out.
The father of the bride was leading the charge. A big burly red-faced man he seemed the life of the party. He'd come to the bar with a group of guests and order drinks for all of them as if he were paying at a bar instead of paying our boss with a check. He always had a drink in his hand. Sometimes two.
He and the groom sampled the famous rum they'd gotten just for tonight. The groom double-checked with me to make sure I wasn't wasting it on something as gauche as a rum and coke. I assured him I wasn't even though there were probably three people within ten feet of him who were drinking that very rum mixed with whatever they'd asked for.
Dinner was an after-thought even though it preceded the dancing. Tables were half-empty even with steaming plates of food because the majority of the guests were up with me at the bar.
A light show started and the DJ started playing music. Even in the open air courtyard it was so loud that a kind of claustrophobic party vibe ensued. The one hundred and fifty or so people present crowded onto the dance floor the way people stuff themselves into a kitchen at a house party even though larger rooms are right there to be taken advantage of.
Now my clientele were sweaty and thirsty instead of poised and glamorous.
I remember feeling pressure from this group to party with them, as if any holdouts cast some sort of aspersion on their own behavior. This wasn't uncommon at these shindigs. I still don't really understand it, why a group who ostensibly know each other would need strangers included in their revelry. I had a general feeling of disdain running throughout my body.
Now, full disclosure here. In looking back on this time, misanthropy was the dominating aesthetic in my thought process. I did not look kindly on my fellow man. You've all seen the moment when a person rants about something and an onlooker rolls their eyes and says, "Projection!" I was a walking embodiment of the syndrome.
Dissembling aside, I did not hold this group in high esteem. I was impatient, I sensed that they would be drinking well past the time we'd been scheduled to be there and that I'd probably be the only one left on the scene, held hostage by the alcoholic urges of the groom and the subtle feeling I got that he wasn't all that eager to start his new life with his new wife. He'd just as soon stay at the bar as go consummate.
At one point the father of the bride staggered up to me. He was bathed in sweat from dancing and his shirt had more fabric moistened by his exertion than fabric that remained dry. His suit coat had disappeared. He tried to order a drink from me but seemed too drunk. I tried to figure out what he wanted but eventually he just smiled and waved me off, as if the effort to explain himself had made him realize that maybe, just maybe he didn't need one more drink. He shambled off towards the dance floor where I saw him rejoin his daughter in her white dress. The condensed crowd closed in around him.
The next time I saw him he would be technically dead.
A shout pierced the air and the music stopped. Even though it was a laptop, in my mind I hear the sound of a needle scratching off of wax. Cries of "Call 911" and "Oh no" filled the air. The temperature seemed to have dropped and breath was visible in front of all but one. Through the circle that surrounded him I saw the sweat stained shirt of the father of the bride.
Chaos ensued. Waiters hovered as far from the dance floor as possible except for another Brendan. A good looking surfer kid who'd become a friend. He had just become an actor and had the kind of physical presence and easy attractiveness of a Josh Hartnett or Ryan Reynolds.
He came up to the bar minutes later, angry. It seems that a doctor in the wedding party had tried to perform CPR. But the stricken man had vomited and the doctor had vomited himself upon attempting mouth to mouth. He'd not let Brendan try even though Brendan was a lifeguard trained in CPR. He knew he could have done a better job, mostly because he sensed that the doctor was drunk. In the moment I believed Brendan and I've always wondered whether that could have been the difference that saved the man's life.
The hush that fell over that courtyard was terrible. Our manager instructed us to pack up as quietly as we could but this soon seemed awful and he reversed the decision and told us to wait until the guests had all left. The ambulance pulled into the courtyard sirens blazing and I'll never forget the vision of a bride in a white gown climbing into the ambulance that held her father.
I thought of the moment when I'd last seen the man, when he had wanted to order a drink but couldn't articulate what he wanted. He must have already been dying at that moment. I tried to remember the penultimate visit he'd made to the bar, when he had ordered what wound up being the last drink he'd ever have.
I couldn't remember it. The name of the drink and the name of the museum still seem lost forever, lost like the dream of a little girl hurtled forward from childhood to the moment that ought to have been her most cherished but now is etched, transformed into a wound in her full grown psyche.
Before her father died I'd given it six months. I try to be more charitable now.
The groom gathered us bartenders before the party to coach us on the liquor he was providing. He was some sort of wine expert or spirit salesman and seemed to be more excited about the drinks than the fact that he'd just gotten married. He seemed to want to drink with us.
I never drank on the job. I knew some of the bartenders did but it just wasn't my thing. So his insistence that I had to sample the rum he'd found just for the occasion that came packaged in round bottles with wicker jackets was mildly annoying. I needed to prep my station and this bore was droning on about the way this particular rum stayed on the back of your tongue and you had to drink it straight and I wasn't to make anyone any mixed drinks with it. They could have it straight but that was it.
Inwardly I made a note to make the first person who came to my bar a margarita with the shit.
His dedication to getting lit seemed to be an indication of the type of crowd we were playing host to. I was stationed in what was probably some sort of sandwich gazebo when the Museum was open. It was a cool late summer night. Perfect weather.
Some weddings you cater are tame, some ragged and wild. This was a strange mix of the two. It was a drinking crowd. And when I say that, what I mean is that they stayed at the bar as opposed to mingling amongst each other. Most weddings people will wander up, get what they need and wander back out in to the maelstrom.
But with these folks you'd have thought there was a flat-screen TV with a big game on. They stayed with me. They drank their drinks and asked for refills which I poured out over the bar into the plastic cups that they didn't bother to throw out.
The father of the bride was leading the charge. A big burly red-faced man he seemed the life of the party. He'd come to the bar with a group of guests and order drinks for all of them as if he were paying at a bar instead of paying our boss with a check. He always had a drink in his hand. Sometimes two.
He and the groom sampled the famous rum they'd gotten just for tonight. The groom double-checked with me to make sure I wasn't wasting it on something as gauche as a rum and coke. I assured him I wasn't even though there were probably three people within ten feet of him who were drinking that very rum mixed with whatever they'd asked for.
Dinner was an after-thought even though it preceded the dancing. Tables were half-empty even with steaming plates of food because the majority of the guests were up with me at the bar.
A light show started and the DJ started playing music. Even in the open air courtyard it was so loud that a kind of claustrophobic party vibe ensued. The one hundred and fifty or so people present crowded onto the dance floor the way people stuff themselves into a kitchen at a house party even though larger rooms are right there to be taken advantage of.
Now my clientele were sweaty and thirsty instead of poised and glamorous.
I remember feeling pressure from this group to party with them, as if any holdouts cast some sort of aspersion on their own behavior. This wasn't uncommon at these shindigs. I still don't really understand it, why a group who ostensibly know each other would need strangers included in their revelry. I had a general feeling of disdain running throughout my body.
Now, full disclosure here. In looking back on this time, misanthropy was the dominating aesthetic in my thought process. I did not look kindly on my fellow man. You've all seen the moment when a person rants about something and an onlooker rolls their eyes and says, "Projection!" I was a walking embodiment of the syndrome.
Dissembling aside, I did not hold this group in high esteem. I was impatient, I sensed that they would be drinking well past the time we'd been scheduled to be there and that I'd probably be the only one left on the scene, held hostage by the alcoholic urges of the groom and the subtle feeling I got that he wasn't all that eager to start his new life with his new wife. He'd just as soon stay at the bar as go consummate.
At one point the father of the bride staggered up to me. He was bathed in sweat from dancing and his shirt had more fabric moistened by his exertion than fabric that remained dry. His suit coat had disappeared. He tried to order a drink from me but seemed too drunk. I tried to figure out what he wanted but eventually he just smiled and waved me off, as if the effort to explain himself had made him realize that maybe, just maybe he didn't need one more drink. He shambled off towards the dance floor where I saw him rejoin his daughter in her white dress. The condensed crowd closed in around him.
The next time I saw him he would be technically dead.
A shout pierced the air and the music stopped. Even though it was a laptop, in my mind I hear the sound of a needle scratching off of wax. Cries of "Call 911" and "Oh no" filled the air. The temperature seemed to have dropped and breath was visible in front of all but one. Through the circle that surrounded him I saw the sweat stained shirt of the father of the bride.
Chaos ensued. Waiters hovered as far from the dance floor as possible except for another Brendan. A good looking surfer kid who'd become a friend. He had just become an actor and had the kind of physical presence and easy attractiveness of a Josh Hartnett or Ryan Reynolds.
He came up to the bar minutes later, angry. It seems that a doctor in the wedding party had tried to perform CPR. But the stricken man had vomited and the doctor had vomited himself upon attempting mouth to mouth. He'd not let Brendan try even though Brendan was a lifeguard trained in CPR. He knew he could have done a better job, mostly because he sensed that the doctor was drunk. In the moment I believed Brendan and I've always wondered whether that could have been the difference that saved the man's life.
The hush that fell over that courtyard was terrible. Our manager instructed us to pack up as quietly as we could but this soon seemed awful and he reversed the decision and told us to wait until the guests had all left. The ambulance pulled into the courtyard sirens blazing and I'll never forget the vision of a bride in a white gown climbing into the ambulance that held her father.
I thought of the moment when I'd last seen the man, when he had wanted to order a drink but couldn't articulate what he wanted. He must have already been dying at that moment. I tried to remember the penultimate visit he'd made to the bar, when he had ordered what wound up being the last drink he'd ever have.
I couldn't remember it. The name of the drink and the name of the museum still seem lost forever, lost like the dream of a little girl hurtled forward from childhood to the moment that ought to have been her most cherished but now is etched, transformed into a wound in her full grown psyche.
Before her father died I'd given it six months. I try to be more charitable now.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Re-Entry
That forever word is a bitch. To be clear, I never said I was leaving this blog forever. But it kind of felt that way. And here I am a mere weeks later??? Who the fuck am I, Brett Favre?
No, but I got what I needed from the hiatus and now I'm ready to lead this blog to the Super Bowl. And I don't care if my old fan base is pissed off about it, I don't care if people think I waffled, I don't care if they think I International-House-of-Pancaked.
In the words of the immortal and sadly unknown rap genius Pimp Fu, "I just don't give a FUck."
I'm going to start with where I'm at right now. After a disastrous trip to the dentist left me unable to eat solid food for about three weeks, I had lost enough weight to want to keep it that way. So I upped my workout regimen considerably. For the past seven weeks I've been a veritable gym rat, doing two upper body workouts, two lower body workouts and continual cardio stints.
Anyone who tells you getting in shape is hard needs to reASSESS. Because it is not hard, it just takes commitment. I promise you, if you work out 4 or 5 times a week for 30 minutes your body will change. And girls, I know you love to think that 45 minutes on a treadmill is a great workout but it doesn't do jack-doodle. 15 minutes of running really fast is way better than a steady 45.
Why have I shifted from books, music and all that esoterica to a rah-rah workout tape?
What can I say. It's just where I'm at.
I'm doing a play. I'm writing a lot. I have many irons in the fire but the thing that is keeping me stoked these days is walking out of the gym with my arms shaking and breathing heavy.
Glad to be back on the pomp.
No, but I got what I needed from the hiatus and now I'm ready to lead this blog to the Super Bowl. And I don't care if my old fan base is pissed off about it, I don't care if people think I waffled, I don't care if they think I International-House-of-Pancaked.
In the words of the immortal and sadly unknown rap genius Pimp Fu, "I just don't give a FUck."
I'm going to start with where I'm at right now. After a disastrous trip to the dentist left me unable to eat solid food for about three weeks, I had lost enough weight to want to keep it that way. So I upped my workout regimen considerably. For the past seven weeks I've been a veritable gym rat, doing two upper body workouts, two lower body workouts and continual cardio stints.
Anyone who tells you getting in shape is hard needs to reASSESS. Because it is not hard, it just takes commitment. I promise you, if you work out 4 or 5 times a week for 30 minutes your body will change. And girls, I know you love to think that 45 minutes on a treadmill is a great workout but it doesn't do jack-doodle. 15 minutes of running really fast is way better than a steady 45.
Why have I shifted from books, music and all that esoterica to a rah-rah workout tape?
What can I say. It's just where I'm at.
I'm doing a play. I'm writing a lot. I have many irons in the fire but the thing that is keeping me stoked these days is walking out of the gym with my arms shaking and breathing heavy.
Glad to be back on the pomp.
Monday, February 1, 2010
The 3 Year Virtual Time Capsule (February 7, 2007 to February 1, 2010)
So here I sit on top of my blog, having counted randomly fifty albums, fifty books, and upwards of fifty concert recollections and I'm left with the question, "What next?"
If I trick myself by writing about a book, album or concert I have no problem revealing details of my life that occur to me. But if I sat down to merely expose my past I'd immediately clam up and say that I am too private to do something like that. This after almost three years of sharing very intimate realities from every phase of my life.
I won't write about film or actors because I don't feel as if I can be truly objective. I am way too firmly on the side of the actor to do that. I champion anyone who has been able to make a living doing this. Even if I personally do not respond to their work I will publicly be positive. Those who know me will scoff at this because I've certainly been brutal in my assessments when talking about actors and actresses but to quote a great song by Del Amitri...
So I can curse her memory
But don't try telling me
That she was not an emerald
In a mountain of coal
In other words, actors are my people and I'll defend 'em. Even the ones I abhor.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying that I've reached another cross-roads here, a point that I knew was coming once I started the 50 Books List. I knew once I finished that list that I'd truly be at a loss as to what this blog would look like. Or if it would continue at all.
I've challenged myself to be more productive as a writer this year but those goals are not centered around this blog. I started writing here to train myself to write every day (or as close as I could come to that). The idea was always to take that skill once I'd acquired it and apply it to something that could actually line the deep echoing hollow of my long suffering wallet.
I've made inroads in that regard that I'm attempting to rile up blood lust to pursue. I have a competitive streak a mile wide that was always engaged by the business of show and since I've been removed from that process to a large degree the killer instinct in me has been champing at the bit. Unfortunately that instinct turned against me for a time when it had no outlet and I've had to do some restructuring in order to keep that from happening.
Now that I've really begun to channel those energies in a different way I've been slowly gathering steam.
Again, all of this is just a way of articulating a kind of farewell to this space. I am not even sure how many regular readers I have. The most comments received by anything I've ever written turns out to be spam generated ads for Asian porn. But I have been very grateful to the people who checked in with me to hear what I had to say. Knowing that there were possible ears and eyes really does transform your writing. Even if those eyes are Japanese school girls.
So I'm gathering my inner town council, my commemorative committee, my artifact collector, my journalist, my crazed artist, my family man and I'm thanking them for having contributed souvenirs to this gleaming cube buried in my backyard for future generations.
I am saying, "This is what it was like for me near the end of the Oughts as I looked back all the way to '69."
My life began as men walked on the moon for the first time. Today I sit and type these words out into the ether, perhaps turning my back on this blog, a thing that isn't really a thing, a thing that didn't exist when I was born.
I feel truly fortunate that I happened along when I did. Thanks for reading.
If I trick myself by writing about a book, album or concert I have no problem revealing details of my life that occur to me. But if I sat down to merely expose my past I'd immediately clam up and say that I am too private to do something like that. This after almost three years of sharing very intimate realities from every phase of my life.
I won't write about film or actors because I don't feel as if I can be truly objective. I am way too firmly on the side of the actor to do that. I champion anyone who has been able to make a living doing this. Even if I personally do not respond to their work I will publicly be positive. Those who know me will scoff at this because I've certainly been brutal in my assessments when talking about actors and actresses but to quote a great song by Del Amitri...
So I can curse her memory
But don't try telling me
That she was not an emerald
In a mountain of coal
In other words, actors are my people and I'll defend 'em. Even the ones I abhor.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying that I've reached another cross-roads here, a point that I knew was coming once I started the 50 Books List. I knew once I finished that list that I'd truly be at a loss as to what this blog would look like. Or if it would continue at all.
I've challenged myself to be more productive as a writer this year but those goals are not centered around this blog. I started writing here to train myself to write every day (or as close as I could come to that). The idea was always to take that skill once I'd acquired it and apply it to something that could actually line the deep echoing hollow of my long suffering wallet.
I've made inroads in that regard that I'm attempting to rile up blood lust to pursue. I have a competitive streak a mile wide that was always engaged by the business of show and since I've been removed from that process to a large degree the killer instinct in me has been champing at the bit. Unfortunately that instinct turned against me for a time when it had no outlet and I've had to do some restructuring in order to keep that from happening.
Now that I've really begun to channel those energies in a different way I've been slowly gathering steam.
Again, all of this is just a way of articulating a kind of farewell to this space. I am not even sure how many regular readers I have. The most comments received by anything I've ever written turns out to be spam generated ads for Asian porn. But I have been very grateful to the people who checked in with me to hear what I had to say. Knowing that there were possible ears and eyes really does transform your writing. Even if those eyes are Japanese school girls.
So I'm gathering my inner town council, my commemorative committee, my artifact collector, my journalist, my crazed artist, my family man and I'm thanking them for having contributed souvenirs to this gleaming cube buried in my backyard for future generations.
I am saying, "This is what it was like for me near the end of the Oughts as I looked back all the way to '69."
My life began as men walked on the moon for the first time. Today I sit and type these words out into the ether, perhaps turning my back on this blog, a thing that isn't really a thing, a thing that didn't exist when I was born.
I feel truly fortunate that I happened along when I did. Thanks for reading.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Book 1: In Search Of Lost Time: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
For many years this six volume masterwork by Marcel Proust was known by a different translated name. 'Remembrance Of Things Past' was the title widely accepted until D.J. Enright's new translation in 1992 appeared. My father set about reading this new translation. He was determined to finish it before he died. And then, I believe, he deliberately refused to do so.
The French title is 'A La Recherche du Temps Perdu' and the key word there is 'Perdu', which is the past tense of the verb 'perdre', or 'to lose'. To translate this title without the words 'Lost Time' is egregious almost to an offensive level. I liken it to Demi Moore and Company deciding that Nathaniel Hawthorne's masterpiece 'The Scarlet Letter' just didn't pack the right kind of punch as is. Like painting a mustache onto the Mona Lisa. Idiots.
I remember feeling a surge of interest in the book once the title had been changed from its bland predecessor. 'Remembrance of Things Past'??? Sounds like a Lawrence Welk special highlighting standards of the '40's. 'In Search Of Lost Time' is a far apter title, capturing the ache inherent in every single syllable, articulating the unspoken continual impossible dream we all share.
All six volumes taken together add up to over 4,000 pages. And these are no Robert Parker (RIP!) three yeses, two no's and a gunshot from Hawk pages. These are dense to an almost pathological level. So far I have only completed the first two volumes and each made 'Ulysses' seem like a graphic novel. Sentences begin, falter, twist, divide, multiply, regain thread, evaporate, shift direction entirely, soar off into rumination on several concurrent topics, and finally resolve, reminding you that every word contained therein did, in fact, refer back to the root. The imagery and expression is breathtaking, the psychological scope enormous, the talent undeniable.
I am not sure exactly when my dad decided to read this series but he kept struggling along with it as his health deteriorated. By the time I expressed interest in it he was on Volume 5. He curled his lip up and waved me off with his good arm, such as it was.
"Just read the first one. Forget the rest of it."
Now, I found this hilarious on several levels. First of all, if anyone ever had any incentive to remove struggle and difficulty from their recreational life, my dad did at this point. Each page was a physical labor bordering on Herculean levels. The concentration it took me in relative health was enormous. For my father I cannot begin to imagine how he did it.
I began to read 'Swann's Way' and I would update him on my progress. We laughed together over the phone about the narrator and what a little momma's boy he was. He describes in excruciating detail the tricks and devices he comes up with to try to get his mother to come up and visit him while he tries to fall asleep. The language and expression are formal to a forbidding degree but once you get into the rhythm of it it is actually quite hilarious.
Then he would just give me a status update of sorts on how much further he was along the way. Finished Volume 5. Started on Volume 6. Speaking about this book was one of the few times he mentioned his death directly.
After my sister's wedding, a tale I cannot really begin to tell, I asked him when he was going to finish Volume 6 because he was quite close.
His response was gruff and funny, like he always was. He knew how many pages were left, how long it would take him to get through it. He was going to wait until the doctor said it was just about time to go.
The day approached. We held our breaths with each one of his. I've never seen suffering even close to this level. And yet he still managed to make jokes, show affection, connect with us. But finally even these qualities seemed to be taken and he was essentially gone from us while tethered ever so slightly to the frail form that rested in the living room sun.
We would take turns and read to him from the final pages of Marcel Proust. By a trick of publishing, it appeared that there were at least one hundred pages remaining. We had not taken into consideration the Appendix. What seemed to be chapter upon chapter to be gone through was merely footnotes. And as my sister sat with him and read, as the final moment gently approached, the hourglass rushed too quickly and all of a sudden he was gone.
When she looked up he had left.
One simple turn of the page remained. Now, anyone who ever met my dad will tell you. This was a smart smart man. He had ample time to finish that Volume even before we all convened to be by his bedside. He knew what he was about.
There is a defiance to that refusal which is very much in keeping with his character. He wanted every second he could get. He didn't want to lose any more time.
For Sheila, Sheila, Brendan, Jean, Siobhan and most of all, Bill...............
The French title is 'A La Recherche du Temps Perdu' and the key word there is 'Perdu', which is the past tense of the verb 'perdre', or 'to lose'. To translate this title without the words 'Lost Time' is egregious almost to an offensive level. I liken it to Demi Moore and Company deciding that Nathaniel Hawthorne's masterpiece 'The Scarlet Letter' just didn't pack the right kind of punch as is. Like painting a mustache onto the Mona Lisa. Idiots.
I remember feeling a surge of interest in the book once the title had been changed from its bland predecessor. 'Remembrance of Things Past'??? Sounds like a Lawrence Welk special highlighting standards of the '40's. 'In Search Of Lost Time' is a far apter title, capturing the ache inherent in every single syllable, articulating the unspoken continual impossible dream we all share.
All six volumes taken together add up to over 4,000 pages. And these are no Robert Parker (RIP!) three yeses, two no's and a gunshot from Hawk pages. These are dense to an almost pathological level. So far I have only completed the first two volumes and each made 'Ulysses' seem like a graphic novel. Sentences begin, falter, twist, divide, multiply, regain thread, evaporate, shift direction entirely, soar off into rumination on several concurrent topics, and finally resolve, reminding you that every word contained therein did, in fact, refer back to the root. The imagery and expression is breathtaking, the psychological scope enormous, the talent undeniable.
I am not sure exactly when my dad decided to read this series but he kept struggling along with it as his health deteriorated. By the time I expressed interest in it he was on Volume 5. He curled his lip up and waved me off with his good arm, such as it was.
"Just read the first one. Forget the rest of it."
Now, I found this hilarious on several levels. First of all, if anyone ever had any incentive to remove struggle and difficulty from their recreational life, my dad did at this point. Each page was a physical labor bordering on Herculean levels. The concentration it took me in relative health was enormous. For my father I cannot begin to imagine how he did it.
I began to read 'Swann's Way' and I would update him on my progress. We laughed together over the phone about the narrator and what a little momma's boy he was. He describes in excruciating detail the tricks and devices he comes up with to try to get his mother to come up and visit him while he tries to fall asleep. The language and expression are formal to a forbidding degree but once you get into the rhythm of it it is actually quite hilarious.
Then he would just give me a status update of sorts on how much further he was along the way. Finished Volume 5. Started on Volume 6. Speaking about this book was one of the few times he mentioned his death directly.
After my sister's wedding, a tale I cannot really begin to tell, I asked him when he was going to finish Volume 6 because he was quite close.
His response was gruff and funny, like he always was. He knew how many pages were left, how long it would take him to get through it. He was going to wait until the doctor said it was just about time to go.
The day approached. We held our breaths with each one of his. I've never seen suffering even close to this level. And yet he still managed to make jokes, show affection, connect with us. But finally even these qualities seemed to be taken and he was essentially gone from us while tethered ever so slightly to the frail form that rested in the living room sun.
We would take turns and read to him from the final pages of Marcel Proust. By a trick of publishing, it appeared that there were at least one hundred pages remaining. We had not taken into consideration the Appendix. What seemed to be chapter upon chapter to be gone through was merely footnotes. And as my sister sat with him and read, as the final moment gently approached, the hourglass rushed too quickly and all of a sudden he was gone.
When she looked up he had left.
One simple turn of the page remained. Now, anyone who ever met my dad will tell you. This was a smart smart man. He had ample time to finish that Volume even before we all convened to be by his bedside. He knew what he was about.
There is a defiance to that refusal which is very much in keeping with his character. He wanted every second he could get. He didn't want to lose any more time.
For Sheila, Sheila, Brendan, Jean, Siobhan and most of all, Bill...............
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Book 2: The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
'The Yiddish Policeman's Union' imagines that Israel did not last after being established in 1948 and that a Puerto Rico like settlement off the coast of Alaska has thrived for 50 years, part of and separate from America. The settlement will revert to American territory and the Jews once again will wander, being forced to leave a bleak landscape that they'd desperately carved into a makeshift homeland.
At the time of its release my family was reeling with the knowledge that my father was not going to recover from the cancer he'd been fighting. So a novel that supposes an imaginary city was, for me, akin to a grim drug, one that helped with your symptoms but had consequences of its own.
The funny thing about Chabon is that he seems to love writing what he calls 'genre fiction'. He talked at length about wanting to do a detective novel and adopting that hard-boiled terseness that is so evocative of that category of literature. He kept it up for about three tight pages and then the real Chabon comes out and sentences last pages and pages last chapters and parentheticals threaten to turn into their own novels.
But, even with the over verbosity wrestling with the nature of the form, Chabon has written a corker of a tale. Meyer Landsman is a Sitka homicide detective losing a long battle with alcoholism and depression. He pines for his ex who just so happens to be his new boss. A chess player in his building gets murdered which he takes rather personally and he sets out to solve the case.
Along the way Chabon gives us a snapshot of a city that never existed. You start to feel the streets, to sense the geography of the place, to truly sag under the weight of the oppressive cold and oncoming dread of relocation. The murder may or may not be related to this seismic change and Landsman risks what is left of his career to pursue a case that everyone wants to bury.
Several times during the reading of the novel I'd find myself forgetting that NONE of this actually existed. When a detective novel happens in New York or Chicago or Boston, the very reality of those cities lends a credibility to the story that enhances the tension. Here Chabon weaves it whole cloth.
And that is what my family did as we journeyed along with my father. You'd think there'd be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. But that was not how my father operated. I'd call from the west coast every day when I got out of work and if my father felt well enough we would chat. He mostly wanted to know what I was up to. We didn't discuss what was happening to him. It would have been like having a conversation about air.
We'd chit chat about the Celtics, about the Red Sox, about whatever he was trying to read at the time, which was slow going because of the pain he was in and the drugs he was on. He'd ask me about Cash and we'd just bask in what a good boy he is.
With 'The Yiddish Policeman's Union', Chabon has behaved like a god of sorts, wiping history away with a stroke of his pen. The citizens of Sitka go about their daily lives trying not to see the future which is staring them in the face.
As if everything was normal.
At the time of its release my family was reeling with the knowledge that my father was not going to recover from the cancer he'd been fighting. So a novel that supposes an imaginary city was, for me, akin to a grim drug, one that helped with your symptoms but had consequences of its own.
The funny thing about Chabon is that he seems to love writing what he calls 'genre fiction'. He talked at length about wanting to do a detective novel and adopting that hard-boiled terseness that is so evocative of that category of literature. He kept it up for about three tight pages and then the real Chabon comes out and sentences last pages and pages last chapters and parentheticals threaten to turn into their own novels.
But, even with the over verbosity wrestling with the nature of the form, Chabon has written a corker of a tale. Meyer Landsman is a Sitka homicide detective losing a long battle with alcoholism and depression. He pines for his ex who just so happens to be his new boss. A chess player in his building gets murdered which he takes rather personally and he sets out to solve the case.
Along the way Chabon gives us a snapshot of a city that never existed. You start to feel the streets, to sense the geography of the place, to truly sag under the weight of the oppressive cold and oncoming dread of relocation. The murder may or may not be related to this seismic change and Landsman risks what is left of his career to pursue a case that everyone wants to bury.
Several times during the reading of the novel I'd find myself forgetting that NONE of this actually existed. When a detective novel happens in New York or Chicago or Boston, the very reality of those cities lends a credibility to the story that enhances the tension. Here Chabon weaves it whole cloth.
And that is what my family did as we journeyed along with my father. You'd think there'd be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. But that was not how my father operated. I'd call from the west coast every day when I got out of work and if my father felt well enough we would chat. He mostly wanted to know what I was up to. We didn't discuss what was happening to him. It would have been like having a conversation about air.
We'd chit chat about the Celtics, about the Red Sox, about whatever he was trying to read at the time, which was slow going because of the pain he was in and the drugs he was on. He'd ask me about Cash and we'd just bask in what a good boy he is.
With 'The Yiddish Policeman's Union', Chabon has behaved like a god of sorts, wiping history away with a stroke of his pen. The citizens of Sitka go about their daily lives trying not to see the future which is staring them in the face.
As if everything was normal.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Book 3: Different Seasons by Stephen King
When Stephen King published this book in 1982 it was seen almost as a joke. The horror guy? Four short novellas? None of which have any spooky monsters? The world at large was ready to laugh him off the stage. So even if you don't connect with King as a writer you have got to respect the courage it took for someone to undercut their own image so thoroughly in service of their muse.
Imagine Tom Cruise taking a small part in an ensemble Broadway drama. Britney Spears mounting a tour in which she sat on a stool in front of a bass/piano/drum trio and sang standards. Angelina Jolie playing a regular person. Harrison Ford doing any independent film. (Quick aside...just watched 'The Mosquito Coast' for the first time and I am now DESPERATE for someone to save Harrison Ford from himself...Peter Weir??? Are you listening? Can you put something REAL together for Harrison Ford, please?)
Whatever you think of those examples and their current career trajectories, the point is that for them to completely go against the grain of what has made them who they are would be a supremely courageous act. It might not work, it might backfire, but they must be commended if they TRY.
Now, Stephen King in 1982 was seen as a JOKE. In spite of the fact that Stanley Kubrick, one of the greatest artists of all time in any genre, had responded to his creation with a masterpiece of his own interpretation, in spite of the overwhelming connection the public made with his work, his writing was looked at like a succession of car crashes on the highway. Riveting but hardly artistic or human.
So what does he do? He comes out with four novellas. Which in and of itself is not common. To make matters worse, none of these stories have the least bit of supernatural gore. They are all real plausible human stories.
Of the four stories, three have been made into SUPERB movies. The first was 'The body' which became 'Stand By Me'. This film, along with 'The Princess Bride', 'Spinal Tap' and 'When Harry Met Sally', make a great case for Rob Reiner as the Film Director of the 1980's. Who else had a better run than that?
'Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption' famously became 'The Shawshank Redemption'. And 'Apt Pupil' is the grossly underrated 'Apt Pupil' with Ian McKellen and the late Brad Renfro.
So. From a man who'd called forth demons, vampires, werewolves, and unspoken evil, we now had four kids on a life changing hike looking for a dead body, an unjustly imprisoned man who grimly clings to hope over almost thirty years in jail, and a twisted young man who blackmails a Nazi war criminal into telling him the grisly details of everything he'd done.
Again, you might not respond to the writing style or the films in any way whatsoever. I've gone over this territory with King and I can't blame anyone who doesn't feel the way I do about his work. But if you can separate those things and see the risk he took, the gamble inherent in taking such a radical left turn away from your hardcore audience, you will begin to get a glimmer of what I'm talking about.
The great artists never rest on what they've already accomplished. They are bored with what they just did. Their lifeblood pumps only in the face of a new challenge, a new idiom, a new path. We cheer them when they rediscover this trait after having abandoned it (John Travolta, Robert Downey, Jr., Mickey Rourke, etc.)
So here's the challenge. Imagine yourself in Stephen King's shoes in 1982. You have countless manuscripts in your drawer that your fans would eat up. You don't know the future. Plenty of writers as popular as Stephen King have faded into obscurity when it seemed like they would never disappear.
What do you do? What do you turn in?
The next vampire epic or the personal story?
That takes balls. I don't know about you, but I'm following that guy's lead.
Imagine Tom Cruise taking a small part in an ensemble Broadway drama. Britney Spears mounting a tour in which she sat on a stool in front of a bass/piano/drum trio and sang standards. Angelina Jolie playing a regular person. Harrison Ford doing any independent film. (Quick aside...just watched 'The Mosquito Coast' for the first time and I am now DESPERATE for someone to save Harrison Ford from himself...Peter Weir??? Are you listening? Can you put something REAL together for Harrison Ford, please?)
Whatever you think of those examples and their current career trajectories, the point is that for them to completely go against the grain of what has made them who they are would be a supremely courageous act. It might not work, it might backfire, but they must be commended if they TRY.
Now, Stephen King in 1982 was seen as a JOKE. In spite of the fact that Stanley Kubrick, one of the greatest artists of all time in any genre, had responded to his creation with a masterpiece of his own interpretation, in spite of the overwhelming connection the public made with his work, his writing was looked at like a succession of car crashes on the highway. Riveting but hardly artistic or human.
So what does he do? He comes out with four novellas. Which in and of itself is not common. To make matters worse, none of these stories have the least bit of supernatural gore. They are all real plausible human stories.
Of the four stories, three have been made into SUPERB movies. The first was 'The body' which became 'Stand By Me'. This film, along with 'The Princess Bride', 'Spinal Tap' and 'When Harry Met Sally', make a great case for Rob Reiner as the Film Director of the 1980's. Who else had a better run than that?
'Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption' famously became 'The Shawshank Redemption'. And 'Apt Pupil' is the grossly underrated 'Apt Pupil' with Ian McKellen and the late Brad Renfro.
So. From a man who'd called forth demons, vampires, werewolves, and unspoken evil, we now had four kids on a life changing hike looking for a dead body, an unjustly imprisoned man who grimly clings to hope over almost thirty years in jail, and a twisted young man who blackmails a Nazi war criminal into telling him the grisly details of everything he'd done.
Again, you might not respond to the writing style or the films in any way whatsoever. I've gone over this territory with King and I can't blame anyone who doesn't feel the way I do about his work. But if you can separate those things and see the risk he took, the gamble inherent in taking such a radical left turn away from your hardcore audience, you will begin to get a glimmer of what I'm talking about.
The great artists never rest on what they've already accomplished. They are bored with what they just did. Their lifeblood pumps only in the face of a new challenge, a new idiom, a new path. We cheer them when they rediscover this trait after having abandoned it (John Travolta, Robert Downey, Jr., Mickey Rourke, etc.)
So here's the challenge. Imagine yourself in Stephen King's shoes in 1982. You have countless manuscripts in your drawer that your fans would eat up. You don't know the future. Plenty of writers as popular as Stephen King have faded into obscurity when it seemed like they would never disappear.
What do you do? What do you turn in?
The next vampire epic or the personal story?
That takes balls. I don't know about you, but I'm following that guy's lead.
Book 4: Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland
I took a broken heart to France and a shattered immune system. The former from a girl, the latter from a deer tick which gave me Lyme's Disease. While I was in France a novel by a man I'd yet to read was published, a novel that disappointed a lot of people, a novel that was written off as 'Fluff' in comparison with his first novel. But had I read it while traipsing around France it would have been akin to falling into a mirror. The magical image that comes to mind is me falling into an inverse world. In reality, shattering glass would have reflected my image and the cuts would have run very deep.
The protagonist of 'Shampoo Planet' by Douglas Coupland has just returned from Europe where he'd cheated on his longtime girlfriend with a sophisticated cutting edge modern-ess. When the foreigner takes him up on his ill-advised invitation to visit him in the States his life is thrown into an uproar.
The manner in which Coupland uses this idea of an 'other' intruding into everyday life is fascinating. Every aspect of your life that you take for granted comes under a different kind of scrutiny. For me this happened because I was the 'Other'. I was foreign even to myself.
I felt as if my personality were being forged in fire, transformed by some great heat, cooled too quickly, prone to shattering. It is almost as if the entire experience were a gauntlet, a self-imposed exile designed to scour every last bit of what I'd been and replace it with whatever greedily came to hand.
I stole pallets from construction sites to build fires. I slept on dirt with my jacket tucked under my neck and woke up with frost on my eyelashes. My cohorts were bundled better than I was so I drank alone and foraged for wood in the field we were squatting in to rebuild the fire. I had no censor. I drank to excess. I smoked French cigarettes for emphasis. I had fun but in looking back it was furlough fun, the kind of fun that gets sailors into trouble, that leaves them stranded in some unwanted port waiting for the next freighter.
This is the kind of fun the characters in 'Shampoo Planet' have. It is an alluring lifestyle and I think readers substitute 'Shallow' for 'Shampoo' a bit too easily because of this fun. These characters are as modern as today's teenagers with their texting and tweeting and technological lives WITHOUT ANY OF THAT INTERCONNECTIVITY.
Think about that for a second.
I was 22 years old when I went to France and I couldn't email anyone. I couldn't Skype. My day to day existence was completely trapped on the continent. This cut me loose from my past in such a dramatic way that I am still feeling the after shocks.
How do you untether a balloon that is tied to each and every one of us?
But the collective psyche was already straining at how ancient things were, how isolated and cut off we were from each other. Imagine what tweets you'd have gotten out of Tehran during the Revolution. My buddy Buzz was born in Iran and moved here as the Shah's regime fell. His father had been a general and saw the writing on the wall. He put together a nest egg and fled to Georgia.
Buzz lost contact with his entire family at ten years of age. Not only that, his entire cultural envelope was burned away.
All I did was go to France. Where I became just another other.
The protagonist of 'Shampoo Planet' by Douglas Coupland has just returned from Europe where he'd cheated on his longtime girlfriend with a sophisticated cutting edge modern-ess. When the foreigner takes him up on his ill-advised invitation to visit him in the States his life is thrown into an uproar.
The manner in which Coupland uses this idea of an 'other' intruding into everyday life is fascinating. Every aspect of your life that you take for granted comes under a different kind of scrutiny. For me this happened because I was the 'Other'. I was foreign even to myself.
I felt as if my personality were being forged in fire, transformed by some great heat, cooled too quickly, prone to shattering. It is almost as if the entire experience were a gauntlet, a self-imposed exile designed to scour every last bit of what I'd been and replace it with whatever greedily came to hand.
I stole pallets from construction sites to build fires. I slept on dirt with my jacket tucked under my neck and woke up with frost on my eyelashes. My cohorts were bundled better than I was so I drank alone and foraged for wood in the field we were squatting in to rebuild the fire. I had no censor. I drank to excess. I smoked French cigarettes for emphasis. I had fun but in looking back it was furlough fun, the kind of fun that gets sailors into trouble, that leaves them stranded in some unwanted port waiting for the next freighter.
This is the kind of fun the characters in 'Shampoo Planet' have. It is an alluring lifestyle and I think readers substitute 'Shallow' for 'Shampoo' a bit too easily because of this fun. These characters are as modern as today's teenagers with their texting and tweeting and technological lives WITHOUT ANY OF THAT INTERCONNECTIVITY.
Think about that for a second.
I was 22 years old when I went to France and I couldn't email anyone. I couldn't Skype. My day to day existence was completely trapped on the continent. This cut me loose from my past in such a dramatic way that I am still feeling the after shocks.
How do you untether a balloon that is tied to each and every one of us?
But the collective psyche was already straining at how ancient things were, how isolated and cut off we were from each other. Imagine what tweets you'd have gotten out of Tehran during the Revolution. My buddy Buzz was born in Iran and moved here as the Shah's regime fell. His father had been a general and saw the writing on the wall. He put together a nest egg and fled to Georgia.
Buzz lost contact with his entire family at ten years of age. Not only that, his entire cultural envelope was burned away.
All I did was go to France. Where I became just another other.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Book 5: A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man by James Joyce
As a kid I could never get this title right. And getting it right meant that my dad would lean down and dispense a quarter from his slender fingers.
We all had to recite Irish authors and titles of their works in order to get our allowance. Clean our rooms? Nope. Take out the trash? Nope. Do the dishes? Nope. I was a terrible roommate upon moving out of my parents house because the only real task I was given was learning that James Joyce wrote 'Ulysses', 'A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man', and 'The Dubliners'.
The one that gave me the most trouble however was 'Finnegan's Wake'. And I don't mean trouble reading it because I have yet to tackle that mountain of gobbledygook. No. I would desperately try to remember the three names I needed to remember and I would invariably blurt out, 'Gilligan's Wake'!
My sister Sheila wrote a gorgeous essay about this ritual which was published in 'The Swanee Review', a venerated quarterly literary journal. My father was extremely proud of her, as we all were.
Now, 'A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man' I have read. And read again. I believe it is three times now and I'm certain that I shall read it again. It is an astonishing read now but if you take a second to place yourselves in the time in which it was published it becomes almost unimaginably good. Because the tone of this narrative literally pre-figures the way that storytelling itself would change over the course of the century. We are now in the age of the Memoir but James Joyce wrote the Grandmother of All Memoirs in 1916.
And it isn't even a memoir.
We are along for the transformation of our narrator from a young child to a man on the verge of adulthood. As usual with Joyce, what happens isn't as important as the words he uses to describe what's happening. I found myself re-reading passages over and over again, not because some critical piece of information was contained therein but simply because I couldn't quite believe that he'd managed to combine words in that particular order, like watching a YouTube video of a LeBron James improvised slam dunk over and over. You understand what is happening and are still fully awed.
The catalog of James Joyce lingered on the fringes of my peripheral vision for much of my own childhood. If I had to, I could lead you to the Joyce books on my father's bookshelves even if you'd never been to my house before. I could lead a blind man to 'The Dubliners' with step counts and turning instructions.
He is our Shakespeare. I'm sure at the time Shakespeare was living there were those who preferred other playwrights. Many Salieri fans wondered what everyone saw in Mozart. But time passed and the world grew up and Shakespeare and Mozart were left standing. Joyce is with them.
As is the cast of Gilligan's Island. Especially that Ginger.
We all had to recite Irish authors and titles of their works in order to get our allowance. Clean our rooms? Nope. Take out the trash? Nope. Do the dishes? Nope. I was a terrible roommate upon moving out of my parents house because the only real task I was given was learning that James Joyce wrote 'Ulysses', 'A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man', and 'The Dubliners'.
The one that gave me the most trouble however was 'Finnegan's Wake'. And I don't mean trouble reading it because I have yet to tackle that mountain of gobbledygook. No. I would desperately try to remember the three names I needed to remember and I would invariably blurt out, 'Gilligan's Wake'!
My sister Sheila wrote a gorgeous essay about this ritual which was published in 'The Swanee Review', a venerated quarterly literary journal. My father was extremely proud of her, as we all were.
Now, 'A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man' I have read. And read again. I believe it is three times now and I'm certain that I shall read it again. It is an astonishing read now but if you take a second to place yourselves in the time in which it was published it becomes almost unimaginably good. Because the tone of this narrative literally pre-figures the way that storytelling itself would change over the course of the century. We are now in the age of the Memoir but James Joyce wrote the Grandmother of All Memoirs in 1916.
And it isn't even a memoir.
We are along for the transformation of our narrator from a young child to a man on the verge of adulthood. As usual with Joyce, what happens isn't as important as the words he uses to describe what's happening. I found myself re-reading passages over and over again, not because some critical piece of information was contained therein but simply because I couldn't quite believe that he'd managed to combine words in that particular order, like watching a YouTube video of a LeBron James improvised slam dunk over and over. You understand what is happening and are still fully awed.
The catalog of James Joyce lingered on the fringes of my peripheral vision for much of my own childhood. If I had to, I could lead you to the Joyce books on my father's bookshelves even if you'd never been to my house before. I could lead a blind man to 'The Dubliners' with step counts and turning instructions.
He is our Shakespeare. I'm sure at the time Shakespeare was living there were those who preferred other playwrights. Many Salieri fans wondered what everyone saw in Mozart. But time passed and the world grew up and Shakespeare and Mozart were left standing. Joyce is with them.
As is the cast of Gilligan's Island. Especially that Ginger.
Book 6: Murder On The Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Melody turned a corner of our apartment into a reading nook yesterday afternoon, something I could never have envisioned, and the sight of it made me think of my father and I burst into tears.
Books were more than books in my house. Our religious life was loosely connected to the local Catholic church, Sunday school, Sunday morning service, but the Bible talk was relegated to that day. The remaining six days were a continual service in the Church of Literature.
The first time Melody ever came on vacation with us to Cape Cod she remarked that there were frequent times when we were all sitting and reading. Separately but together. Silent vacation! The funny thing is, that in our minds it's like a big conversation we are all having, through the various books we are reading. But in reality there are six people with their heads buried in six different books.
My dad didn't hold forth on the topic of literature or impose books on us and then discuss. No. He followed his own interests and assumed we would do the same. The best form of laissez-faire parenting. So when I was twelve or so and started devouring every single Agatha Christie book I could find he accepted it as a matter of course. He didn't say, 'Well, before you read Christie you should read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle' or 'What about the Hardy boys?'
I think I preferred Hercule Poirot to Miss Marple then, something I'm not as certain of now. Miss Marple and her cases usually seemed contingent on some small-town sense of gossip and human nature while Poirot was usually in some exotic locale and forced to view some question through a foreign lens in order to solve it.
In 'Murder On The Orient Express' I remember being enthralled with the opulence and other worldliness of train travel in the 1930's. It seemed like a different planet to me and one that I longed to live in. Trim suits, turned down brims of fedoras, cigarette cases, porters and bellhops, cocktails and intrigue.
The cases didn't mean that much to me, who did it, why, etc. What I really lost myself in was the description of the world that these people lived in, and this is where Christie shows her true genius. If you needed to know what life was really like in those times, her novels are time capsules. The particulars of each case usually hinge on specific real life details, things that reveal clear-as-a-bell quotidian patterns.
At this time I had no notion of becoming an actor. I wanted to play sports for a living, preferably for one of the Boston teams. If I really had to I would become a professional athlete for another city but I would always long to play for my hometown heroes.
But the novels of Agatha Christie sparked some connection, some wish to be transported elsewhere, to embody something different. I could see myself with a potbelly and a razor sharp curlicue mustache, pulling a watch fob out of my high-waisted pants to clock some crucial moment in time. I imagined myself as the murderer, seething as I sat and listened to this little Belgian describe with excruciating exactitude how I'd ALMOST gotten away with it.
What did my father think of Agatha Christie? I have no idea. He read mystery novels, but only mystery novels that took place in Boston or Ireland. Agatha Christie was my choice. He let me be twelve.
I'm trying to make the same mistake with my son.
Books were more than books in my house. Our religious life was loosely connected to the local Catholic church, Sunday school, Sunday morning service, but the Bible talk was relegated to that day. The remaining six days were a continual service in the Church of Literature.
The first time Melody ever came on vacation with us to Cape Cod she remarked that there were frequent times when we were all sitting and reading. Separately but together. Silent vacation! The funny thing is, that in our minds it's like a big conversation we are all having, through the various books we are reading. But in reality there are six people with their heads buried in six different books.
My dad didn't hold forth on the topic of literature or impose books on us and then discuss. No. He followed his own interests and assumed we would do the same. The best form of laissez-faire parenting. So when I was twelve or so and started devouring every single Agatha Christie book I could find he accepted it as a matter of course. He didn't say, 'Well, before you read Christie you should read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle' or 'What about the Hardy boys?'
I think I preferred Hercule Poirot to Miss Marple then, something I'm not as certain of now. Miss Marple and her cases usually seemed contingent on some small-town sense of gossip and human nature while Poirot was usually in some exotic locale and forced to view some question through a foreign lens in order to solve it.
In 'Murder On The Orient Express' I remember being enthralled with the opulence and other worldliness of train travel in the 1930's. It seemed like a different planet to me and one that I longed to live in. Trim suits, turned down brims of fedoras, cigarette cases, porters and bellhops, cocktails and intrigue.
The cases didn't mean that much to me, who did it, why, etc. What I really lost myself in was the description of the world that these people lived in, and this is where Christie shows her true genius. If you needed to know what life was really like in those times, her novels are time capsules. The particulars of each case usually hinge on specific real life details, things that reveal clear-as-a-bell quotidian patterns.
At this time I had no notion of becoming an actor. I wanted to play sports for a living, preferably for one of the Boston teams. If I really had to I would become a professional athlete for another city but I would always long to play for my hometown heroes.
But the novels of Agatha Christie sparked some connection, some wish to be transported elsewhere, to embody something different. I could see myself with a potbelly and a razor sharp curlicue mustache, pulling a watch fob out of my high-waisted pants to clock some crucial moment in time. I imagined myself as the murderer, seething as I sat and listened to this little Belgian describe with excruciating exactitude how I'd ALMOST gotten away with it.
What did my father think of Agatha Christie? I have no idea. He read mystery novels, but only mystery novels that took place in Boston or Ireland. Agatha Christie was my choice. He let me be twelve.
I'm trying to make the same mistake with my son.
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