This will be my last post this week as I'm heading to Grand Cayman tomorrow for the FIU/Books & Books Writers' Conference. I'm flying down with most of the faculty; in fact, I'm sitting in a row with two novelists, so I'm putting a lot of thought into my choice of inflight reading. I can't bring a novel by one author without offending the other. (And airlines now make you pay for any additional novels.) So I may go to the bookstore today and buy the latest James Patterson. Offend them both.
I recently received an e-mail from a writer acquaintance who was in the hospital recovering from a stroke. After relaying the news, he assured me that he was going to write about it.
I found this comforting. In our post-literate, visually-addicted age, there are not many reasons for writers to be thankful, but here was one: You can take the worst that life throws at you and turn it into art (or at least prose).
A happy thought during hurricane season.
Last night in class one of my students - a woman in her 20s - used the word "spooning." It always reminds me of Vladimir Nabokov, and I told the class why after Amber had finished reading.
A professor of literature before the success of Lolita, Nabokov was having a conversation one day with a colleague who complained that two of his students were spooning in the back of the class.
"Be thankful," Nabokov told him, "they're not forking."
I wanted to pay belated homage to Wilfred Sheed, who died last month at the age of 80, by quoting my favorite line from one of his novels: "The American male matures only after he's exhausted all other possibilities."
So this morning I googled the line to make sure I remembered it correctly. I got one hit: a story I wrote for the Sports section of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel about a nude cruise held during Super Bowl week in 1995.
Yesterday the Miami Herald ran a story in the Tropical Life section about how - despite all the excitement generated by Art Basel - local artists are having a difficult time making a living. A similar article could have been written after the book fair about local writers.
Watching Martin Scorsese's film of Fran Lebowitz, Public Speaking, I wondered if she had lost some of her rapier wit. But perhaps anyone, filmed talking for an hour, would get a bit tiring. Though I did like her disdain for technology and her belief in the need for a cultural elite. And even her predictable complaint about tourists was amusing, as she told of passing them on the street and catching bits of their conversations, like the fact that they didn't like the singing waiters at such-and-such a place. And how she'll stop and say to them: "Really? We'll get rid of them then. Because we created them for you."
Talking about Dorothy Parker, she moved on to James Thurber, giving the indication that he was one of her comic heroes. She told of the day his commemorative stamp was issued in his hometown, the name of which she couldn't remember - even though, it seemed from the story, she had been there for it. "Wherever it was he was from in Ohio," she said dismissively, as if Ohio were somewhere in the Hindu Kush. She sounded like a living, breathing, talking version of the Saul Steinberg poster View of the World from 9th Ave. "Cincinnati," she said finally, giving it a wild, Manhattanish stab.
James Thurber not only grew up in Columbus, he wrote about it constantly. My Life and Hard Times, one of the great works not just of American humor but of American literature, begins: "I suppose that the high-water mark of my youth in Columbus, Ohio, was the night the bed fell on my father." If you're a lover of Thurber, you know about Columbus. Especially if you've been there for the issuing of a stamp in his honor. Being a New Yorker is not an excuse.