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.
I’ve spent much of the week happily engrossed in a novel written by a friend. Brave in Season, by Jon Volkmer, tells the story of a group of Black railroad workers in the 1950s who spend part of a summer in a small Nebraska town, where interactions between the “gandy dancers” (as the railroad men are called) and the townspeople are mostly cordial but reach a climax in an exhibition baseball game. Described as “a novel of race, railroads, and baseball,” Brave in Season is that and more: It is a beautiful evocation of small-town America and a touching coming-of-age story (the title is taken from a poem by A.E. Housman). It has memorable characters, emotional scenes, and occasional drama. In fact, it would make an excellent movie – a better one, I suspect, than the fantastical Field of Dreams. And Nebraska’s most famous director – Alexander Payne – would be the perfect person to make it.
An interesting review in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review of Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life by Joshua Leifer, who writes in the book, as an example of the watering down of Jewish identity in this country, that instead of Saul Bellow novels we now have Seth Rogen movies.