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.
Today marks the start of Polish American Heritage Month, one of the less promoted of the themed months. Hoping to set up October talks about my memoir, I spent part of the summer contacting bookstores. A few show special consideration to the marginalized and underrepresented. In my pitch to these, I noted that there are few groups more underrepresented in American publishing than the Poles. No bookstore I contacted invited me to speak.
It was a slow night at the café. The 20-something waiter was sitting at the hostess station scrolling through his iPhone.
“The Harry Potter woman died,” he said to the waitress, and immediately I thought: J.K. Rowling?
Then I realized he was talking about Maggie Smith.