Before reading from his memoir at the Miami Book Fair on Saturday, Peter Godwin explained the difference between memoir and autobiography. With autobiography, he said, you’re like the news reporter on TV: The camera is focused on you, and wherever you move, the camera moves with you. With memoir, you’re behind the camera, moving it wherever you wish.
My friend and fellow travel writer Alan is in town for a conference (by day he’s a patent attorney) and last night he gathered a few friends for a dinner at Villa Romana in Hollywood. I sat between a Ukrainian-Canadian woman now living in New York City and a man from Bogotá who spoke about the deteriorating situation in his country. Across the table, a tall German man who lives in Potsdam told a Polish woman (my wife) of his concerns about the future of Europe. A little after 8 pm, a man in a glittering sport coat appeared with an accordion and a woman in traditional dress sang Romanian melodies. They reaffirmed my belief that Broward is more ethnically diverse than Miami-Dade.
Joseph Epstein, reviewing the new book about Sid Caesar in the weekend’s Wall Street Journal, gave the best explanation I have ever read for why so many great comedians are Jewish. It starts, he writes, “with finding absurdity in the ordinary, humor in the serious. How could it be otherwise in a people said to be chosen by God yet throughout history persecuted more than any other? … Life itself, they sense, is a bit of a joke – one too often played on them. God himself, some Jews believe, loves a joke. This is reinforced by Jewish habits of criticism, irony, skepticism.”
Yesterday I arrived at Philadelphia International Airport, for my flight home, looking for something to read. I went into a small bookstore, checked the magazines in an all-purpose store, and browsed the magazines at a kiosk in the concourse. Each carried the same two “serious” magazines: The New Yorker (which I subscribe to) and The Economist (which I bought). There was no Atlantic, no Harper’s, no New Republic. Though People and The Oprah Magazine were prominent in all locations.
Philadelphia is a major city with excellent colleges and universities in its vicinity: Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Swarthmore, Penn. Students at these institutions are probably too busy with course work to read periodicals, but presumably a number of graduates still live in the area. Wouldn’t they appreciate more stimulating reading? Or is it assumed that, when traveling, everyone’s IQ drops a few notches?
The cool weather this week has been good preparation for our trip tomorrow to the cold northeast. Will be back here next Wednesday, or Thursday - depending on flights.
I needed an oil change last week and, after making an appointment, I received a text with an estimate of $76. My friendly neighborhood garage has over the last few years gone high-tech.
I dropped the car off at 8 am and went to a nearby café. About an hour later I received a text from the garage, with a new estimate of over $500. Apparently, I needed a new battery – news to me – and a change of brake fluid. And the rotation of the tires, which used to be included, was now an additional charge because I’d bought the tires elsewhere, not through the garage. I passed on the new battery and the brake fluid.
When I went to pick up the car, I told the manager that I came to his garage originally because whenever I took the car to the dealer they would always find things the car “needed” to up the price. He insisted the car needed everything he suggested. Perhaps, I said, but in the old days someone would call me, and tell me over the phone what they had found, and ask me if I wanted to go ahead with the work. Now I get an impersonal text.
Most people appreciate getting a detailed text, the manager said. But I suspect the real beneficiary here is the garage: It’s much easier to lie, or at least fabricate, in a text than in a conversation.