Wand'rin' Star

Day 353 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and a sweet, earnest man came in to the bookstore yesterday looking for books by Karen Armstrong because he had seen her on Charlie Rose. (Here's her TED bio.)

He particularly wanted her book on Islam, but we didn't have that, and other of her books had gone out recently, but I found for him The Case for God and The Spiral Staircase, an account of her life in the convent and why she left.

We stood at the register for a while, waiting for Sarah to get off the phone so we could run his credit card (small business quirk) and talking about compassion in the world in times like these, or in any times.  What we have in common.  It was a small, sweet moment of connection with a stranger.  Now we are less strangers.

And what could be stranger, you might ask, than the American theatre convention of musical comedy?  And, I might answer, a musical comedy western! I refer, of course, to Paint Your Wagon, starring Clint Eastwood as a singing Gold Rush guy, along with Lee Marvin, and a bunch of men in No Name City.  Then along comes Jean Seberg, gorgeous, and married to a Mormon who has another wife, so, upon demand of the lonely men, up for auction.  Tit for tat, so to speak, Jean is eventually interested in having two husbands.

But it's a 3-hour film, and that's when I fell asleep.  Memory and Wikipedia assure me that all hell broke loose and literally swallowed up this Gold Rush boom town with fancy ladies in it from a kidnapped stage coach, etc.  I didn't actually get to hear Lee Marvin sing "Wand'rin' Star" in his wonderful drunken gravel, but I did hear Clint Eastwood sing "I Talk to the Trees."  The plot of the film is quite different from that of the stage musical, which I've never seen.  Does anybody do that anymore?

And to bring in a pertinent book, I own and have read Played Out: The Jean Seberg Story, a biography by David Richards, given to me by my parents one Christmas.  They were frequently giving me biographies and autobiographies of actresses during my own high-school musical years, and, back then, it was sort of hard to read why...  Were they supporting me in my vague career choice, or warning me?  Played Out is certainly a cautionary tale.

In retrospect, of course, I see that 1) my parents were always supporting me, but 2) wanted me to be clear eyed about the realities of a career in the theatre, and 3) probably hadn't read these books themselves.  But, hey, the front flap of the dustjacket starts, "Jean Seberg was forty when a policeman in the 16th arrondissement in Paris discovered her disintegrating body under a crumpled blanket in the back seat of white Renault."

And Seberg took up writing later in life.  Hmm.  1) Thank God I've never played St. Joan (Seberg's first big role, after those high school plays she starred in, and, alas, a major film flop) and 2) Thank God (whatever God is) that, at 40, I just pierced my ears.