Forty-three years ago today, General Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial law in Poland:
“The news on television was now being delivered by a man in a military uniform. Tanks and soldiers patrolled the streets. Schools were closed until after the holidays; theaters, cinemas, and concert halls were closed indefinitely. Telephones throughout the country had been disconnected; the borders closed to citizens. Solidarity’s leaders were being interned; General Jaruzelski jokes were being minted.” – from Falling into Place: A Story of Love, Poland, and the Making of a Travel Writer.
It was a perfect weekend for the Miami Book Fair. On Saturday morning, David Kirby – following two poets not from the School of Uplift – read a poem about gratitude that listed the many things he is grateful for. Afterwards, his book The Winter Dance Party, was nowhere to be found, something for which he was clearly not grateful. But, unfazed, he said he would tell people it had sold out.
Kirby’s old friend Billy Collins read shortly after in the frigid auditorium. Among the poems were some very short ones, like “3 AM.”
My hand is asleep.
At least it’s a start.
During the Q&A, a teacher of writing asked for some tips. Collins told her to get the students to read, admitting that that is difficult these days. Young people don’t read books, he posited, because they don’t want to be alone. With their phones they never are.
The teacher specifically asked about novels, and Collins said that poetry and fiction are “two different countries.” He added that “being a poet doesn’t require any interest in other people,” while novelists need to look into other people’s lives.
Yesterday, I went to hear Charles Bock, Priyanka Mattoo, and Carvell Wallace. In an interesting twist, Wallace read an excerpt from Mattoo’s memoir and Mattoo read an excerpt from Wallace’s. This worked surprisingly well, considering that Wallace’s memoir is about growing up Black and queer, and Mattoo’s is about her family’s exile from Kashmir. She said that she had never written anything (besides screenplays) before she sat down to write her memoir, excerpts of which were subsequently published in the New York Times and The New Yorker.
Following them were Eric Weiner, Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), and Shalom Auslander. Handler said that he carries a notebook with him wherever he goes; not a fancy leather notebook – he noted the Moleskin trailer outside at the street fair – but a cheap spiral notebook. I dug in my bookbag and retrieved the green memo notebook I had bought at Walgreen’s. An elegant notebook, he said, would make him feel even more pretentious than he already did taking notes.
Like many good writers, they had been precocious readers when young. Handler told of picking up Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal at the town library when he was a boy. Auslander said that, around the age of 16, he walked into Gotham Book Mart in Manhattan and asked the salesclerk if they had anything funny. The man gave him a book by Kafka. He enjoyed it so much that he returned and asked if they had anything else that was funny. The man gave him Beckett.
Tuesday morning I dropped my car at the garage and walked with my book to the nearby café. The book, A Sunny Place for Shady People by Ryan Murdock, is about Malta. I left it on an outside table and went inside to order.
“How’s that book you’re reading?” a young man asked me.
I told him it was very good, written by a Canadian who spent four years on the island.
“I noticed the title,” the man said. “You know, that’s been said about this place.”
I told him that “a sunny place for shady people” was, originally, Somerset Maugham’s description of the French Riviera. He nodded as if that – or at least the author’s name – rang a bell.
I took my iced tea outside and noticed that the man at the neighboring table was reading For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Yesterday I spoke at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach as part of its Florida Voices series. On arrival I was tickled to find a display of old books about Poland that had been created by programming librarian Amanda Kiernan. Scattered around the books were red and yellow leaves, which were decorative, seasonal, and, as Amanda explained, a subtle nod to the title of my memoir.
I was honored to be a guest on Ryan Murdock's excellent podcast Personal Landscapes. For a delightful hour we talked about Poland, the Cold War, travel books, travel writing, and even movies, including the usefulness of screenplays in learning a second language.
At the Old Florida Bookshop the other day I learned that I had just missed the former owner of Gene’s Books on Sanibel Island. Before it was destroyed by hurricane Ian in 2022, Gene’s was probably the best bookstore in the state, housing its extensive collection in a series of small cottages. One was devoted entirely to mysteries, and had them shelved geographically: English, Scandinavian, etc. The literature section was just as impressive. I would have liked to have told Gene how much I enjoyed his bookstore, and asked him what he was up to now. Clearly, he is still buying books, even if he’s no longer selling them.
Before leaving, I took a picture of the store cat, a lovely tabby, who had made himself comfortable on one of the shelves next to a copy of the Vladimir Nabokov-Edmund Wilson letters.