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.
Jack Kerouac was born on this day in 1922 in Lowell, MA. He died 47 years later in St. Petersburg, FL.
Visiting St. Pete in November I drove by his old house, where he had lived with his wife and mother. A man was standing on the porch who turned out to be the new owner. He was showing the house to a prospective tenant, and I asked if I could have a look inside. He said OK. There was a sectional in the living room, a bedframe in the bedroom, a table set for four in the kitchen, and a Barcalounger in the den. This last item held me the longest. It was probably not Kerouac’s – I’d read that all of the original furniture had been removed – but it seemed somehow to carry his imprint. I could picture him there, sunk in the cushions and another alcoholic stupor as the sounds of a ballgame slurped from the TV.
In Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, Jerry Seinfeld expressed admiration for John Updike, which is not surprising, given both men’s fascination with life’s minutiae. Updike used it to make poetry and Seinfeld uses it to create comedy.
Yesterday afternoon, looking for things to put on Giftster, I read the "Books of the Year" feature in a month-old issue of The Spectator and came across Tom Stoppard: A Life by Hermione Lee. I promptly added it to my list, even though I had never heard of the author.
In the evening I picked up Martin Amis's Inside Story and on page 69 read: "Twelve months earlier, along with four other British writers (Martina Warner, Hermione Lee, Melvyn Bragg, and Julian Barnes) I was a guest of the Friends of Israel Educational Trust."