Sunday we went down to Art Miami and saw, among other works, those of the 10-year-old boy who became something of a star last week. His paintings were interesting and looked not at all out of place, yet I kept thinking of a story I'd read about James Thurber. After his drawings began appearing in The New Yorker, mothers started submitting their children's work. Thurber sent them a standard reply: "Your son can certainly draw as well as I can. The only trouble is he hasn't been through as much."
In the New Yorker profile of Colm Tóibín, which I just read, this being the time of year when I try to get through old issues, the author D.T. Max tells the story that after The Blackwater Lightship was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the author returned to Dublin and, finding the fridge in his house empty, went out to by some groceries. As he headed down the street, he was serenaded by the honking of car horns and the flashing of headlights – a public acknowledgment of his literary achievement.
Yesterday at Bookwise, the excellent secondhand bookstore in Boca Raton, I bought a copy of Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer. I had not gotten it when it came out in 2004 because I had a lot of Liebling already, but reading it in bed last night I realized that there is no such thing as too much Liebling.
It makes sense, because of the cost, that billionaires are going into space, but why aren't they taking poets with them?
CBS's morning shows were all over the travel beat this past weekend. On Saturday viewers learned that Paul Theroux lives in a kind of Hawaiian Hemingway house, with geese instead of cats, and on Sunday they were shown a homebound Rick Steves playing taps at sunset from the deck of his house in Edmunds, WA, a ritual he performs every evening to the appreciative applause of his neighbors.