Sam Graff was the husband of my first editor, Sally Lane, back in 1977 at the Trenton Times. Sam had worked at the paper before moving on to the Daily News in New York, commuting every day by train in suit and tie. In summer, he sometimes wore a white suit that went well with his thick mustache. He looked very good in hats.
To me, Sam was the ideal of the big city newspaper editor. He loved opera, spoke German, and was armed with a formidable store of knowledge on a vast array of subjects, which he would never flaunt, but reveal quietly when the occasion demanded it. He was worldly and yet a proud Trentonian, sophisticated and at the same time possessing a remarkable kindness and warmth. And he was very funny, able to see the humor in life, the countless absurdities of the modern world, and comment on them with wit.
When my first book, Unquiet Days, came out, Sam and Sally came to New York to hear me talk about it at the Kosciuszko Foundation. After the talk, we met with some other friends, one of whom asked me if I was working on a second book. Sam answered before I could: “Unquiet Nights.”
In her book Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, Jan Morris writes of a group of people who “form a Fourth World, or a diaspora of their own. They are the lordly ones! … They share with each other, across all the nations, common values of humour and understanding. When you are among them you know you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not gladly, at least sympathetically. They laugh easily. They are easily grateful. They are never mean. They are not inhibited by fashion, public opinion or political correctness. They are exiles in their own communities, because they are always in a minority, but they form a mighty nation, if they only knew it.”
Farewell to one of the lordly ones.
One of the many differences between adulthood and childhood is that now I enjoy going to the dentist. Especially around Halloween, as mine puts out candy. Friday, as I was deliberating over which to choose, my dentist said, “Take one with lots of nuts.”
I'm off on a little Florida road trip - will be back here on Thursday.
The editor of The Spectator, Fraser Nelson, is retiring after 15 years. In his farewell column, he wrote that the magazine pays allegiance to no political party (he wrote “tribe”) but to “elegance of expression, independence of opinion, and originality of thought.” It was the perfect distillation of the magazine’s character, and the reason I find it so readable. But he did leave out one quality: wit.
Yesterday I spoke at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach as part of its Florida Voices series. On arrival I was tickled to find a display of old books about Poland that had been created by programming librarian Amanda Kiernan. Scattered around the books were red and yellow leaves, which were decorative, seasonal, and, as Amanda explained, a subtle nod to the title of my memoir.
When I was a travel editor, writing a bi-weekly column, one of the ideas I kept in my back pocket was a column imagining a chance meeting, in some foreign backwater, between Anthony Bourdain and Rick Steves. The two most famous American travelers presented an interesting contrast in styles, not unlike Goofus and Gallant, and I thought an invented conversation between them might make for an amusing column.
I was reminded of that unwritten column while reading Ann Patchett’s essay in Sunday’s New York Times. It was about email, and like many of the Patchett essays I’ve read, it illuminated her enviable life: a highly successful author – one of email’s benefits, she says, is that it brings her unexpected writing assignments – surrounded by love. She loves her neighbors, she writes, and she loves her sister, who loves her back; she enjoys “the warmth of husband and dog.” She is blessed, as not that many writers – or, for that matter, people – are, and she is appreciative of her blessings.
So l like to imagine a meeting, at some secluded writers’ retreat, between Ann Patchett and Annie Ernaux.
Saturday, Lionel Messi played at Chase Stadium (and scored a hat trick) while Taylor Swift sang at Hard Rock Stadium (to a record 80,000-plus crowd) – two of the world’s most famous people performing on the same night in South Florida.