I apologize for the absence, but I flew to Branson for a long weekend and a (probably long) story.
Coming back last night, during my layover in Atlanta, I found the Cafe Intermezzo tucked inside Buckhead Books in Concourse B. I took a seat at the end of the bar and read the menu. Then I looked around at my fellow barflies: Except for the one couple, everyone was gazing into a Smartphone, or texting on one, or talking on a cell phone, or tapping at a Notebook. The man sitting next to me had his phone plugged into his ear (the one nearest me). There was no chance of striking up a conversation or even asking how the soup was. I ordered the jambalaya and turned my eyes, in defeat, to the baseball game. It's getting tough out there for travel writers.
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.