To see the negligible, nearly invisible, presence that literature has in contemporary life one need only watch Jeopardy! I am constantly astounded by answers that seem obvious to me but are out of the reach of people with much greater stores of knowledge. Last night, under the category “The New Yorker at 100,” the clue was about a staff writer who wrote a classic essay on Ted Williams’ last at-bat as a Boston Red Sox. They showed a picture of the writer, along with the information that his dream as a boy growing up in a small Pennsylvania town was to one day write for The New Yorker. No one buzzed in. Though, later in the show, one contestant was able to identify “A Room of One’s Own” as a famous essay by Virginia Woolf.
Yesterday I spent a pleasant hour listening to Paul Theroux on Sophy Roberts’ podcast “Gone to Timbuktu.” He talked about George Orwell (and why he was not the saint people think he was), Ernest Hemingway (a poseur, a tourist in Africa who shot a lion when he would have been better off learning Swahili), Bruce Chatwin (who never traveled alone and craved attention), his first bestseller The Great Railway Bazaar, the evolution of travel writing. I listened in admiration of his dedication (he writes every day), his wide-reading, his on-going curiosity (he’s off to Canada soon, to research a book about his ancestors), and, at 83, his ocean-paddling, his bike-riding, his daily swims, and his undimmed enthusiasm for people, places, books, life.
In Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, Robert Harris, author of Conclave, was asked to name three writers he would invite to a literary dinner party. “My literary heroes,” he answered: “Graham Greene, George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh.”
I found his answer surprising for two reasons: Rarely, in these politically correct times, do people respond with the names of three dead white males, and rarely do their favorite authors correspond so closely to mine. Though I wouldn’t have all three men around for dinner. I would mix things up: Not in obedience to DEI but for the sake of a more lively conversation. Imagine the fun if fellow Catholics Flannery O’Connor and Richard Rodriguez joined Waugh at the table.
An interesting interview with Rick Steves in yesterday’s New York Times magazine, particularly when he talked about the personal costs of travel (though they were similar to those experienced by many workaholics). And he somewhat downplayed the environmental costs. He claimed that, if suddenly rendered unable to travel, he would embrace the situation, taking as much joy in the pleasures of home as he did those of the road. It reminded me of Jonathan Raban’s acceptance of, and fascination with, the stroke that ended his traveling life (which he brilliantly chronicles in his memoir Father and Son). Good travelers possess an innate optimism, and curiosity about things, that serve them well wherever they are.
Before heading to The Parker last night to hear David Sedaris, I went through my Best American Travel Writing anthologies to see if there were any in which we both appeared. I found three, but grabbed the 2002 edition, where our pieces appeared back-to-back. My plan was to have him sign the table of contents page, where – I would tell him – we were neighbors. Once at the Miami Book Fair I handed John Updike a quarterly in which he had a poem and I had an essay, and he wrote: “To Thomas Swick from John Updike” – then put a bracket around our two names and wrote “In this issue!”
Sedaris took the stage at The Parker without an introduction and, after a few perfunctory remarks, began reading from a sheaf of loose pages. The longest reading was of a piece I had recently read in The New Yorker, about a visit with friends in Maine, a cancelled flight to New York, and a long drive in a rental car with another stranded traveler, a young Chinese woman. This was disappointing; humor depends on the element of surprise. Yet the way he read it made it funnier than I had originally found it.
Also, there were some things in it that I didn’t remember. I had forgotten that the people gathered at the house in Maine had included a MacArthur fellow and a Pulitzer Prize winner. And I had completely erased from my memory the scene in which one of them expresses his dislike of Greta Thunberg and then does a mocking imitation of her.
There is a scene, on the drive to New York, in which they pull up to a gas station to use the restrooms only to find the gas station closed. Heading for privacy behind a dumpster, they spot two Orthodox Jews adjusting their flies. Sedaris shouts “Hasidim!” – “the way I might have said ‘Deer!’ or ‘Racoons!’” I didn’t remember the second animal.
When he finished reading, Sedaris revealed that The New Yorker employs a “sensitivity reader.” (He said the term three times, the first two times in a garbled accent that showed his disdain.) This reader, he said, had insisted that he take out mention of the prestigious prizes because they sounded too “elitist.” The reader – I don’t think Sedaris mentioned his or her gender – also took out the bit about Thunberg.
They had fought over his reaction to seeing Orthodox Jews emerging from behind a dumpster; Sedaris had been able to salvage ‘deer’ but he had lost ‘racoons” because, the reader said, they were viewed as furtive and shifty. “But,” he pleaded, now with his audience, “racoons are what you see around dumpsters.” For me – if not for him – this was not a big loss; one example is often better than two.
There is a discussion in the car, with the Chinese woman, about pandas; this was flagged by the reader because it touched on stereotypes. Sedaris defended it – and won – by saying it was the woman who had brought up the subject.
Sedaris said he was grateful to write for The New Yorker and noted that any cuts they make to his stories he will restore when he puts them in books. But his insights into the inner workings of the place explained why the writing is so often bland. (Unlike that in the British Spectator, whose new editor, in his introductory column, said that the best magazines are parties on pages.)
During the Q&A, someone asked how much he had walked that day, and, in answering, he praised the Riverwalk. “I love it – that walkway along the water.” In less than 24 hours, he had found one of the loveliest things in Fort Lauderdale.
The line for autographs stretched through the lobby. A man came around and handed everyone a piece of paper on which we were to write what we wanted his inscription to read. This was an attempt to save time, yet Sedaris is so friendly with fans, so giving of his time, that for five minutes the line didn’t move. I tucked the anthology under my arm and headed for the door.
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.