I recently bought a book that carried a blurb calling it a memoir of “uncommon grace.” At home I googled “uncommon grace” and got 140,000 results.
I recently finished reading Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time, a beautiful memoir that has the added attraction of covering the author’s childhood in Broward. His family moved in the ’40s to a place called Chula Vista, which, on googling, I found just south of Davie Boulevard and west of I-95. The area then was wooded wilderness that a socialist from Wisconsin dreamed of turning into a workers’ community; if you were willing to build your own house, he gave you a plot of land.
Most of the Florida action takes place in this subtropical Arcadia – at least that’s how it appeared to an adventurous young boy – but there are a few scenes from Fort Lauderdale beach, where a cousin lives, and a few from downtown, to which the young Conroy sometimes rides his bike. One day he grabs the tailgate of a chicken truck, “peeling off at the foot of Los Olas Boulevard” to catch a movie at the Sunset Theater.
The misspelling pained me. That a writer who took such care with his choice of words, and their placement in his sentences, didn’t bother to check the correct name of the street seemed insulting, as if the street were one detail that was too insignificant to bother with. At the same time, there was an undeniable thrill in seeing even the incorrect name of our main street – the one I drive down at least once a week – in a work of literature. It gave Las Olas an unimagined, transcendent importance.
An importance that is recognized by very few – but now at least one – of the city’s residents.
Before dinner the other evening Hania and I sat on the balcony drinking wine, eating smoked fish spread, and reading. When a neighbor appeared below, walking his dog, I imagined we presented a sterling portrait of marital boredom. What helped us, dimmed the picture a little, was the fact that we were reading books – Elena Ferrante and Tom Bissell – and not looking at screens. Books lend their owners an aura of seriousness and purpose that smartphones or iPads never do. Never mind that we could have been lost in airport novels, and online one can read scholarly journals. A digital device has a variety of uses – chatting, shopping, watching videos, searching for old flames – and this multifacetedness makes resorting to one while in the company of another person seem rather desperate, and rude (and intrinsically furtive). A book, when it’s in one’s hands, serves only one function. And reading, while sometimes touted as the ultimate escape, is eternally tied to the idea of edification, which automatically removes it from suggestions of desperation and boorishness. (Not to mention a book’s transparency, the title always there in plain view.) Read a lot of books and you get described as bookish, which is still a compliment; screenish, if the word existed – and perhaps it should – is something no one would wish to be called.
How many writers, while watching televised interviews from distant dens, scan the books in the background for their on?
I was saddened yesterday by a text from a friend informing me that the Books & Books on Lincoln Road was closing its doors. Then I read the article in the Herald, which cheered me up: The owner, Mitchell Kaplan, was not leaving Miami Beach; he was looking for another location on a more interesting and affordable street. Knowing Mitchell, I assume he’ll open an even more impressive store in a neighborhood that will be transformed.