Monday I had an MRI and yesterday I got a text thanking me for choosing the facility and asking for a review.
Really, I thought, a review? Then I remembered that I had asked for classical music and they had given me easy listening.
An interesting review in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review of Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life by Joshua Leifer, who writes in the book, as an example of the watering down of Jewish identity in this country, that instead of Saul Bellow novels we now have Seth Rogen movies.
Today marks the start of Polish American Heritage Month, one of the less promoted of the themed months. Hoping to set up October talks about my memoir, I spent part of the summer contacting bookstores. A few show special consideration to the marginalized and underrepresented. In my pitch to these, I noted that there are few groups more underrepresented in American publishing than the Poles. No bookstore I contacted invited me to speak.
It was a slow night at the café. The 20-something waiter was sitting at the hostess station scrolling through his iPhone.
“The Harry Potter woman died,” he said to the waitress, and immediately I thought: J.K. Rowling?
Then I realized he was talking about Maggie Smith.
In the same column, David Hare said that he was applying for French citizenship - his wife is French - and that it required taking a test to gauge his knowledge of the language. He responded that they might think him arrogant, but the last time he had sat down to take a test was in 1968 and he could not bring himself to do it again. The consular officer replied: “Don’t worry, a certain arrogance isn’t a bad qualification for French citizenship.”
When looking for something to stream, Hania will always gravitate toward murder mysteries, while I much prefer spy stories. The other day, reading The Spectator, I came across a column by the English playwright David Hare who noted that Margaret Drabble once proclaimed that “boys like spy stories because they’re about derring-do” (I’m quoting Hare paraphrasing Drabble) while “girls prefer detective stories because they’re about psychology.”