Day 55 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project.
Several of us were traveling over the weekend, and Bob reports that he was sucked into the vortex of a used bookstore:
"The weather in Washington was beautiful on Thursday, so I went for a walk at lunchtime--and was sucked into the vortex of a used book store. My eye was caught by a two-volume biography of Lytton Strachey by Michael Holroyd. Having always been interested in Strachey as a critical writer, and having been intrigued by Emma Thompson's portrayal of Dora Carrington, I picked it up. And, when I saw Gielgud: A Theatrical Life right next to it, I couldn't resist that either. Then, I saw Jack Germond's and Jules Witcover's Blue Smoke & Mirrors--their account of the 1980 presidential campaign, and had to pick it up. (I've long been a fan of both of them, since Jules Witcover's 85 Days: The Last Campaign of Robert Kennedy, and since the first column I read by Jack Germond back in the Washington Star), Seymour Hersch's Dark Side of Camelot and lastly Don DeLillo's Falling Man. I only stopped at six volumes because of how far I had to walk back to the office."
Because I work in one, I am very familiar with the hazards of being sucked into the vortex of used books, and I wish Bob well with his heavy lifting as well as his heavy reading. I am hoping he reports here again when he has time, as his comments are always enlightening. Anna was reading Falling Man earlier in this blog, and I think my dad would like the Gielgud book, as he was reading one Alec Guinness's memoirs, Blessings in Disguise, this summer, so I borrowed and read it, too. Ah, in fact we traded memoirs, as I recall, so, as I had wished recently, he has already read The Tender Bar! And, yes, my mother had found the Guinness book in the vortex of Babbitt's Books.
I will rummage in the vortex to see if we have My Name Escapes Me, another Guinness memoir, built from diary entries, just because I love the title! This seems like one I could dip into on breaks and leave in the store for someone else, which I should, of course, do more often!
Ah! And all this reminds me that I will indeed get to pack books for a week-long vacation in Michigan in July. There is no Internet access in the house but there is in a little cafe down the street, so if my son allows it, I will borrow his laptop to keep up with this blog. If not, I will again hand write the entries and post them later, as I did with this little Easter weekend trip.
And I loved Susan's comment about asking perfect strangers what they are reading, which I do regularly in the vortex of the bookstore, or sometimes when I follow people outside and talk to them on the sidewalk. (Julie, I am not a stalker.) I promise I will ask perfect strangers on the beach this summer what they are reading, especially if they have actual sandy books visible on the towel or sticking up out of the swim bag. And in the Internet cafe. If I am not too shy.
And it's possible that we will get to Virginia sometime this summer, too, Bob! I have an aunt there fixing up a house in Charlottesville, and a handyman artist husband with a volleyball pal in Northern Virginia (a separate country, as I now understand it, the rest of Virginia being a part of The South, which was brought home to me when I handled a Richmond, VA newspaper from the Civil War period listing Jefferson Davis as The President of the United States), and another aunt in Alexandria. If events collide, we might wander the vortex together!
Showing posts with label Alec Guinness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alec Guinness. Show all posts
Monday, April 5, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Blessings in Disguise
Day 2 in the "What are people reading?" project, and I am glad I made a list on Day 1, because lots of people responded to the question over on Facebook! Glad to see people commenting and following up here, to say more about why they are reading what they are reading! And our focus here is print, hard copy! What are people reading while holding the actual book in their hands?--though really I am happy about all reading, as it seems to encourage reflection. I am just interested in how print is doing these days, and why some people still read it, want it, etc. As well as our general choices, tastes, peferences, and the variety in them.
So today I will riff on biography, autobiography, and memoir, as several people are reading those! At Babbitt's Books, where I work, people often come and ask for the Biography section, and we don't have one. The biographies are interspersed in the various other categories of history (by era), science, literary criticism, etc. We do have a Belles Lettres section, a catch-all for actual letters, memoir, essays, and, yes, "beautiful letters" of all sorts. (The Frederick Busch book, Letters to a Fiction Writer, would have gone in Belles Lettres, but I snatched it before it could go either online or on the shelf. Sorry! Sorry for you and for me, job hazard: very deep, very empty pockets. Not sorry about the reading. Lovely book. I'll try to read a letter a day.)
In our sports section, which has categories for different sports + miscellaneous, Fred might have found the biography of Vince Lombardi that he's reading now. Bob would have looked for the biography of Raymond Carver in our lit crit section, although we might not have it yet, as it is still new, Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life, by Carol Sklenicka, and we are a used bookstore. But we do get some very recent biographies right after people read them, and I found Personal History, Katharine Graham's autobiography at Babbitt's, along with A Tragic Honesty: the Life and Work of Richard Yates, by Blake Bailey, hardcover, first edition, first printing, signed!--published in 2003, before the release of the film Revolutionary Road, based on Yates's novel. Poor Yates--it is a life so bleak I cannot yet get through it...and thus, poor Bailey! But I will return to this one, to learn all I can about how to live in this world.
And I want to know that, too: Why are you reading a memoir, biography, or autobiography? (And what is the difference between memoir and autobiography? And--that Oprah show incident, and other cases, too!--what is the difference between memoir and fiction?!) I know I read everything, but especially accounts of real lives, to learn how to live in the world.
Beth is reading Christopher Plummer's memoir In Spite of Myself, and I imagine it is because she admires him as an actor and is herself immersed in a life in the theatre. This summer my dad, also a theatre person, was reading one of Alec Guinness's memoirs--he wrote more than one--and I picked it up when he was done. Blessings in Disguise--a charming, gentlemanly memoir, told in vignettes. I was delighted by Guinness's balance of honesty and discretion in talking about the people he had trained and worked with. This was the out-of-print paperback, by the way, and my mom had picked it up for him at Babbitt's, but there is a new softcover printing out now, too. Celebrity memoirs can be those kiss-and-tell books, or otherwise sensationalized, but they can also be honest and sweet accounts, pithy, funny, full of quiet revelations.
Babbitt's also has a Star Bio section for those celebrity books, but in it you might find A Star Danced by Gertrude Lawrence, a book I first read as a teen, published in 1945, so my mother had recommended it to me. It was on our shelf at Babbitt's the last time I looked, but things come and go... My parents gave or recommended to me several books about writers and actors when I was growing up...and entering adulthood...hoping to help me make decisions about how to live in the world, what career to pursue, whether to be an actor or a writer. My "ambition" (and I rather lack ambition, as outrageous as the coming confession will sound) was to be like Shakespeare--write, and play small parts on the stage. Hmm...
In crucial years, they gave me Respect for Acting, by Uta Hagen; The Bright Lights: A Theatre Life, by Marian Seldes; and Notes, by Eleanor Coppola, about her husband's making of the film Apocalypse Now. This along with the advice about a life in the theatre: "If you can do anything else, do it." And, all along, they encouraged me in a writing life... Hmm...
Recently, I found this quotation by writer Paul Auster:
Becoming a writer is not a 'career decision' like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don't choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you're not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.
I love this long, hard road, and it feels joyful, in a peaceful way.
In college, I played Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst by William Luce. There is a poignant moment when she says, "It seems I am going to be famous!" when Thomas Wentworth Higginson is coming to visit her. It seems she was not. But that, too, was a blessing in disguise.
So today I will riff on biography, autobiography, and memoir, as several people are reading those! At Babbitt's Books, where I work, people often come and ask for the Biography section, and we don't have one. The biographies are interspersed in the various other categories of history (by era), science, literary criticism, etc. We do have a Belles Lettres section, a catch-all for actual letters, memoir, essays, and, yes, "beautiful letters" of all sorts. (The Frederick Busch book, Letters to a Fiction Writer, would have gone in Belles Lettres, but I snatched it before it could go either online or on the shelf. Sorry! Sorry for you and for me, job hazard: very deep, very empty pockets. Not sorry about the reading. Lovely book. I'll try to read a letter a day.)
In our sports section, which has categories for different sports + miscellaneous, Fred might have found the biography of Vince Lombardi that he's reading now. Bob would have looked for the biography of Raymond Carver in our lit crit section, although we might not have it yet, as it is still new, Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life, by Carol Sklenicka, and we are a used bookstore. But we do get some very recent biographies right after people read them, and I found Personal History, Katharine Graham's autobiography at Babbitt's, along with A Tragic Honesty: the Life and Work of Richard Yates, by Blake Bailey, hardcover, first edition, first printing, signed!--published in 2003, before the release of the film Revolutionary Road, based on Yates's novel. Poor Yates--it is a life so bleak I cannot yet get through it...and thus, poor Bailey! But I will return to this one, to learn all I can about how to live in this world.
And I want to know that, too: Why are you reading a memoir, biography, or autobiography? (And what is the difference between memoir and autobiography? And--that Oprah show incident, and other cases, too!--what is the difference between memoir and fiction?!) I know I read everything, but especially accounts of real lives, to learn how to live in the world.
Beth is reading Christopher Plummer's memoir In Spite of Myself, and I imagine it is because she admires him as an actor and is herself immersed in a life in the theatre. This summer my dad, also a theatre person, was reading one of Alec Guinness's memoirs--he wrote more than one--and I picked it up when he was done. Blessings in Disguise--a charming, gentlemanly memoir, told in vignettes. I was delighted by Guinness's balance of honesty and discretion in talking about the people he had trained and worked with. This was the out-of-print paperback, by the way, and my mom had picked it up for him at Babbitt's, but there is a new softcover printing out now, too. Celebrity memoirs can be those kiss-and-tell books, or otherwise sensationalized, but they can also be honest and sweet accounts, pithy, funny, full of quiet revelations.
Babbitt's also has a Star Bio section for those celebrity books, but in it you might find A Star Danced by Gertrude Lawrence, a book I first read as a teen, published in 1945, so my mother had recommended it to me. It was on our shelf at Babbitt's the last time I looked, but things come and go... My parents gave or recommended to me several books about writers and actors when I was growing up...and entering adulthood...hoping to help me make decisions about how to live in the world, what career to pursue, whether to be an actor or a writer. My "ambition" (and I rather lack ambition, as outrageous as the coming confession will sound) was to be like Shakespeare--write, and play small parts on the stage. Hmm...
In crucial years, they gave me Respect for Acting, by Uta Hagen; The Bright Lights: A Theatre Life, by Marian Seldes; and Notes, by Eleanor Coppola, about her husband's making of the film Apocalypse Now. This along with the advice about a life in the theatre: "If you can do anything else, do it." And, all along, they encouraged me in a writing life... Hmm...
Recently, I found this quotation by writer Paul Auster:
Becoming a writer is not a 'career decision' like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don't choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you're not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.
I love this long, hard road, and it feels joyful, in a peaceful way.
In college, I played Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst by William Luce. There is a poignant moment when she says, "It seems I am going to be famous!" when Thomas Wentworth Higginson is coming to visit her. It seems she was not. But that, too, was a blessing in disguise.
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