Must You Go?

Day 267 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and Susan Stamberg is reading Must You Go? by Antonia Fraser.  Yes, yes, I'm on NPR again, Morning Edition, and you can read an excerpt from the book and read or hear the interview here.  It is a memoir of Fraser's life with Harold Pinter, her playwright husband.

I heard half the interview on my way home from the polling place, where I voted before breakfast and had delightful brief conversations with the volunteers about Genevieve Bujold and Adlai E. Stevenson, II, none of which (even the Stevenson) was any form of electioneering.  (I have a wonderful odd life!)

I joined the interview with Stamberg saying, "Once Pinter started writing — in his studio at the bottom of their garden — he worked in a tear," something I can identify with as a writer.  Fraser said he would get into bed and out again, to write some more.

Since I joined the interview in progress, I missed the story of their meeting, the reason for the title of the book, the scandal, et cetera, but I had heard about some of this before and I got caught up by reading at the NPR site.  This is a book I would like to read, a gathering together of incidents and insights from Fraser's diary during her years with Pinter.  And as she is a wonderful biographer herself, I'm sure it is well done.

Stamberg asked Fraser to read the poem "Paris," the first poem he wrote to her.  I came right home and read the poem again in Harold Pinter's Collected Poems & Prose, the first Grove Press edition, a gift from a playwright friend.  My friend got to hear Pinter speak toward the end of his life and found him blunt and curmudgeonly, rude even, but perhaps that was partly due to his long struggle with cancer, and partly due to the state of the world as he was saying goodbye to it.

Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.

But then he had to go.

Conversations about Books

Day 258 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and today I'll report on some mini-conversations about books, and give a tip on where to send some creative writing if you are an Illinois teacher.  So heads up to Donna, Susanna, Alice, Chris, Amy, Tom, et cetera!



OK, one conversation was about why this book was $40! Otherwise, the guy would have bought it, and I know he will seek it out, because he was very intrigued by reading around in it.



Here's what the author said about it:  A surreal semi-autobiographical blackbook record of a semi-mad period of my life, in that mindless, timeless state most romantics pass through, confusing flesh madonnas with spiritual ones.  (According to Amazon.com.)  Know who and what it is?

Yes, Her, by Lawrence Ferlenghetti. It's $40 because it is a first edition hardcover copy in very good condition, with its dustjacket also in very good condition. I'm glad that he'll be able to find it at Amazon in paperback as cheap as $5, new, and $1.83 used, and see that it would have been a good deal at $40, since the only hardcover offered in the Marketplace at the moment is $137. But it's signed.



And Lawrence Ferlinghetti would probably be happy about the cheap paperback, too, as he co-founded City Lights Books for softcover books! We checked our paperback fiction shelves at Babbitt's, and even the poetry shelves (just in case) for a softcover edition. But I think A Coney Island of the Mind was somewhere in the stacks on the floor.



Another sweet conversation was with a very young girl who likes very old books. She has some at home.  Her dad says our bookstore looks like his house, with full shelves and piles on the floor that make it hard to get to the shelves.  I was glad I had explained the trade policy to his daughter. They might be able to bring in more than they take back out, reducing their floor clutter....and adding to ours. Uh oh.



And, indeed, some of today's conversations with were people who brought in bags of books and who will be back once somebody has a chance to look at them.  I got only a tiny stack done because on Sundays I teach my little poetry class in the rare book room.



And that's how I got a copy of New Scriptor, published at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois as "A Forum for Illinois Educators."  (I will peruse it and return it to the group, to be passed around among educators, next week!)  According to the inside rear cover, "Any Illinois educator may submit ficiton [sic], poetry, drama, art, and expository writing."  Typographical error in the guidelines notwithstanding, this issue does contain poems by Martha Modeana Vertreace-Doody, well-known Illinois poet and educator.



Gosh, I better not make any typos in this blog entry!  Oh, wait, it's a blog entry.  I can relax!



Anyhoo, you can get more info about the journal here.



And numerous conversations today were actually about Babette, of Babette's Books.  (That would be the very cute kitty you see here, who now lives in the bookstore.)

A Walk in the Cemetery

Day 244 of the "What are you reading, and why?" and Rachael is no longer reading the third book in the Anna Pigeon series by Nevada Barr, because she put it down.  She was reading this series about a Park Service ranger, because 1) she likes books about wilderness and 2) she herself was working with the National Park Service.  She read the first two books in the series, but found herself uninterested in the third and troubled by some factual errors, though not overly troubled, as she understands slights allowances might be made in fiction.

But she felt guilty not finishing a book, until her husband, a great reader, told her it was OK.  "That's what's great about a book.  You can put it down."

You might pick it up later, or at a better time, and like it more, and finish it, as Rachael did with A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson.  She started that one and didn't like what he was saying about what the Park Service was doing wrong, or wasn't doing at all, but then she picked it up again when she was actually working for the Appalachian Trail--the subtitle is Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail--because the Trail people had a big display on it.  She ended up liking the book a lot, and was glad she'd read it.

Rachael is now an educator with the local history museum, and one of the coordinators of the Evergreen Cemetery Walk, so I was able to talk with her today, my last day as Helen Davis Stevenson, mother of Adlai Stevenson II.

As we walked along the cemetery path, she told me her new husband, the great reader, had read 3 books on their honeymoon!  (No joke here.  That's for a sitcom.  This is a book blog!)  Now he's reading Larry McMurtry.  And she will be reading something soon, as she has a gift certificate for Babbitt's Books.

But I also wanted to tell you about a wonderful woman I met in the cemetery Saturday morning.  She was passing through on her way from Champaign, Illinois, to Madison, Wisconsin, and had always wanted to visit the grave of Adlai Stevenson.  When she saw the signs on U.S. 51, she stopped, drove to the monument with the aid of the cemetery signs and arrows, and found the plot, the plaques, the light blue United Nations flag.

And that's where I found her as I approached.  We had a lovely chat, and I was able to show her where the actual bodies lie, Adlai next to his father and mother, his grandfather, the Vice President, set apart under a big monument.  You can see the monuments here, though the sidewalk is newer now, the flagpole out by the street path.

This woman, who is 80, had voted for Stevenson when he was presidential candidate, twice, and was sorry that we don't have people like him in politics anymore.  She is convinced that money runs things now, and people vote to hold onto their personal money.  Sounds about right.

But I see things changing, finally, gradually, some.

And then, just before I left today, I had such a nice talk with a man in a motorized wheelchair, chugging over to see a pile of walnuts.  He lives next to the cemetery, harvests the nuts, and sells them at a local farmer's market!  We talked about the big commercial walnut place in Missouri, about how walnut hulls stain the skin, and all sorts of things.  His wife is buried in the mausoleum, only a few feet away from his house, but he has a new wife now.  People are beautiful!

Well, for instance, here's Nicole Kidman, and the United Nations flag: