26 April 2012

Big Night – The Followup

Last week we were happy, gushing. We were about to give away books! Now we've done it, and we're even happier, even more gushing! And we gave away hundreds of thousands of free books both here and in Britain.

I took my box of specially marked copies of Ann Patchett's novel Bel Canto and walked along Caspar beach. A couple sunning themselves against a photographically well-placed log was startled to be interrupted by an old guy toting a Rick Steves daypack full of novels, but they adapted quickly, not only accepting a copy, but posing for a quick snapshot.

I felt really, really good having made that connection, so I approached a trio of souls down by the surf line, two nearby husbands on lawn chairs, and a guy shading his eyes and staring out to sea, waiting for his ship to come in, or his son to come in from surfing, one of those. They all got books. So did the young Belgian mother in the campground laundry, the older gentleman walking across a parking lot, the woman in the camp store and the guy on the deck of the store.



I interrupted one of those we're-camping-so-let's-have-a-couple-of-drinks parties to give out two copies. At Russian Gulch State Park I screeched to a halt and gave a bicyclist a copy; another to the woman in the toll booth, another to a mother with two young children – "Really – you're giving me this book? Really? Why?" – and I startled awake a camper dozing off in the front seat of his sedan. I think he was the happiest of all the recipients, and he let me take his photo, too.



So much for my short, personal experience of the first annual World Book Night USA. I had fun, felt good, and nobody punched me out for bothering them. I plan to do it again next year. I hope YOU'LL do it next year, too.

Reports from all over:

My friend Paul Takushi at the UC Davis bookstore said, "Our store had eight Givers, including myself. None of them were college students. I think the college crowd here was largely oblivious to the event. If it's not in the school paper, not on the Daily Show, or not for extra credit for one of their classes, they're clueless.

"One of our Givers was going to take the Spanish version of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz to Folsom Prison. Another was going to visit foster homes in Sacramento. Stuff like that makes me teary. I walked around campus and downtown Davis. Whenever I approached someone the first thing I said was, 'I'm not selling anything and I'm not going to ask you to sign something.' I told them about World Book Night, then offered them the free book. (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie). Everyone seemed pretty happy to get a book. Nothing strange or super-uplifting happened to me. Just made me feel good to spread the WBN gospel."

Other reports: At Hicklebee's "We had about 20 people sign up. One man works in local jail. He was distributing them there. A staff member & friend walked around downtown San Jose and gave out books to homeless people, people in wheelchairs, anyone who happened along. The giver said she'd happily pay money to get to do it again!"

At Laurel Bookstore in Oakland, "I had a number of people who came in over the last week or so to ask what this was all about and wanted to know in plenty of time for next year. And some others asked how their organization or shelter or program could benefit. We're keeping lists in anticipation."

One book giver wrote a thank you note to the SF State University bookstore: "Giving books to eager and appreciative readers felt rewarding and meaningful. Clearly, people who received the books were even more inspired to read, as they felt honored to get a free copy..."

Novelist Cris Cander wrote on his blog: "To give away twenty copies of Peace like a River by Leif Enger, I chose a shelter for homeless, throwaway and runaway teens. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life... In the adjacent lunchroom, two dozen or so teenagers – many of them scarred, tattooed, broken-looking – talked and ate in small groups... the kids looked at me somewhat suspiciously. As I told them why I loved this incredible story of a young boy's journey across the frozen Badlands of the Dakotas in search of his fugitive older brother, it occurred to me that I might not be able to give away any books at all.

"Then one tall, thin boy raised his track-marked arm and said, 'I'd like a copy.' You would? I said, relieved. What's your name? 'Donny. I never had my own book before.' ... 'Me too. Can I have one?' 'And me.' They came one by one, and I pressed a brand-new copy into each of their hands. To a one, they thanked me with such sincerity I didn't think I could bear it."

Cander's report continues on his blog. I wasn't where he was, but yes, it really did feel that good.


NOTES



If you are in the UK or Ireland, and who knows, you might be...

20 April 2012

Big Night

We are happy. We are gushing. We are giving away books!

"Little ol' Brookline, NH will be having its own World Book Night event at the Brookline Public Library. My book is The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, which was the subject of an attempt to ban in the local schools. So, we'll be having a discussion about banned books as part of our event....

"... reception for Book Givers in Pittsfield, Massachusetts!"

"Yvonne Zipter: I am happy and excited to be providing copies of Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping to residents at my YMCA. Only a few days now."

"Lindsay Alaimo:  I picked up my books for World Book Night USA. Thank you to The Concord Bookshop for the wonderful reception last night. I'm giving out The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold on Monday. Look for me and other book givers all day!"

"Stacey Biemiller Maisch: These books can't wait to be GIVEN away. No thievery required come Monday night!"

We are all excited, nationwide. It's a very good thing, all these free books, with the help of cooperating publishers, libraries, bookstores, YMCAs, and all the happy people on World Book Night, both givers and receivers, Monday, April 23.

If you didn't get a chance this time around to sign up to give away books, you can do it next year.

Last week the Mendocino contingent of givers, about seven of us, met at one of our local independent bookstores. We sipped wine – two colors of wine! – and talked about the almost 300 books we plan to give away, and how we plan to do it.

One person works at a local state park, so she's got a forest full of campers and a truck, and boy are the people in those tents going to be surprised when she hands them their free book. Books will also be given away at coffee shops, restaurants, urban and rural fire stations. One book giver plans to hang out at local laundromats. At the suggestion of that state park ranger person, I will carry a bunch of copies of Ann Patchett's novel Bel Canto into the nooks and crannies of Russian Gulch State Park. Boy will those Russians be surprised!

We locals also are giving away The Stand by Stephen King; The History of Love by Nicole Krauss; Peace like a River by Leif Enger; Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card; and The Hunger Games, the wildly popular novel by Suzanne Collins.

World Book Night started in England only last year and expanded into the US this year where it also will be an annual thing. A million books – a million! – will be given away in one evening, both here and in the UK and Ireland. April 23 is the UNESCO International Day of the Book. And this date also honors William Shakespeare and Miguel Cervantes, both of whom died on April 23 in 1616.

First came World Book Day, which began in the UK and Ireland 15 years ago. Book tokens are given to schoolchildren. World Book Night, mostly for grownups,  began there and expanded to the United States.

Givers in Britain get to hand out books by Bill Bryson and Jane Austen and Bernard Cornwell and Roald Dahl and Cormac McCarthy and we don't. Maybe next year.

When I first heard of this project I applauded, but the cynic in me guessed that publishers were offloading unsold books onto unsuspecting light or non-readers. Not at all, as it happens. More than a dozen publishers have printed special World Book Night editions at their own expense, including shipping them around the country. Each of us givers will have 20 copies of one title culled from a carefully selected list of about 30.

Inside each specially marked box of books – actually, inside each book, is a Dear Reader letter:
"You are holding in your hands one of the free books especially printed for World Book Night... handed out by thousands of volunteers in communities across America as a celebration of the joy of books and reading... we hope you will seek out more books, and there is no better place to do so than in a bookstore or library. We are blessed with thousands of them in America, all staffed by people who have devoted their lives to telling others about books. They stand ready every day to introduce you to a good book you might fall in love with."
Find out more at www.worldbooknight dot org.



NOTES

What is World Book Night USA?  If you are in the UK or Ireland, and who knows, you might be...

12 April 2012

Five Wrong Turns A Day -- Only Five?

Today we uncovered a scandal that has gone unreported – since 1988! 

In a thrift store copy of Frommer's Hawaii on $50 A Day, published in 1988, on page 7, is an invitation to join Frommer's $25-a-Day Travel Club – Save Money on All Your Travels. OK as far as it goes.

Until we turn to the back of the book where an advert reads "NOW, SAVE MONEY ON ALL YOUR TRAVELS! Join Arthur Frommer's $35-A-Day Travel Club."

In just 400 pages the cost of this Club inflated by 40%. "We don't have to tell you that inflation has hit Hawaii as it has everywhere else," the authors write. Yes, but 40%?

In 1987 the national inflation rate was 4.7% – high, but nothing like the inflating cost of the $25 to $35 dollar-a-day club.

I bring this up because I've been laughing out loud reading Doug Mack's new book Europe on 5 Wrong Turns a Day.

Mack's mother Patricia took a trip to Europe fifty years ago with the first Frommer's Guide – the most famous one, Europe On Five Dollars A Day. She kept a journal, sent back postcards, and her son one day came across the keepsakes and another copy of the Five Dollars A Day book. Son Doug decided to retrace his mother's steps following the same guide she once used.

No Google, no Trip Advisor – only his own naivete and that book. Adventure followed, some of it funny, other parts enlightening, boring, frustrating.

I once did what Doug's mother did – traveled Europe in the 1960s using Frommer as my guide. I've been to Europe many times since. I wouldn't use such a guide now, even if I could.

Doug Mack wanted to be in the same position his mother was all those years ago – first trip to the Continent, knowing very little about what would be there. Using the same book, now a half century out of date.

So, how did it go, and what did he discover? Lots, as it turns out. 

Take packing. Frommer recommended packing light, utilizing a lot of drip-dry Dacron. Frommer called for a tweed sports jacket and two neckties, among other things. At the time this was a startling improvement over, say the Fielding guides. Temple Fielding himself traveled with two large suitcases containing at least "35 handkerchiefs, ten shirts, ten ties, three pairs of silk pajamas," plus a briefcase, and a raffia basket holding "maraschino cherries, vermouth, a bottle of Angostura bitters, a portable Philips three-speed record-player, five records, and... a large nickel thermos with a wide mouth." Plus a yodeling alarm clock.

In his own packing, Mack writes, "just one pair of shoes but five shirts... zero suits, zero handkerchiefs." 

"I noticed my fellow Americans doing the same – the stereotypically informal, boorish Americans had given way to circumspect, well-attired ones. Good job, team. For example, I wore only black socks, because I had heard that white ones were the classic sign of the American tourist."

"Pierre: Ha! Look at that tourist with his camera and guide-book!

"Jacques: Wait, but observe his socks! They are ... black! 

"Pierre: Zut alors! You are correct! He is one of us! What a fool I am! Let us go speak to him in English and invite him to lunch!"

In Florence, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Munich, Zurich, Vienna, Venice, Rome and Madrid, Mack began to realize that the beaten track is beaten for a good reason – that's where a lot of the good stuff is. Still, he notes, in Munich "amid jovial tourist crowds and pork-festooned pork... the authentic, historic character is rather overwhelmed by all the people who have come to marvel at the authentic, historical character."

Mack learned that "the most important travel app is the off button" and that "basic common sense and open-mindedness and willingness to go with the flow and trust the Goddess Serendipity" is the best way to travel, whether on or off the beaten track.

"Arthur Frommer, after all, was the one who said to the masses, 'You can do this.' You don't need a lot of instruction, really. Just get out there and make it up as you go along, guided not by rules or numbers but by an insatiable curiosity. No matter where you go or what your budget, you're bound to meet interesting people, learn about other cultures, see some cool things (and some not-so-cool things – but that's part of the experience) and come back alive and invigorated and slightly-but-in-a-good-way confused."

Staying on that tourist trail, Mack decided, can be an ethical decision. "These places... can handle the crowds... So please don't go beating new paths," he writes. "An ecotourist lodge in the middle of an otherwise-untouched beach or jungle may do its best to educate visitors about the place and be light on the land, but many of these places would be better off left alone."



NOTES

Europe on 5 Wrong Turns a Day: One Man, Eight Countries, One Vintage Travel Guide by Doug Mack. Penguin paperback $15. ISBN 9780399537325.


I wasn't able to find a copy for sale of the original Frommer's, but I did find:

Europe on Twenty Five Dollars a Day by George McDonald and Arthur Frommer.Simon & Schuster 1984 paperback in Good condition. Price: $1.49.



05 April 2012

Notes for a Short Lecture

Here begin my notes for a short lecture about -- “music” -- as if I could even begin to talk about all the things music means to me... but here's a start:

“To some it is Napoleon, to some it is a philosophical struggle, to me it is allegro con brio.”  Arturo Toscanini

Five of us attended Tuesday night a talk on the mathematics behind sound. We learned that people progressively lose their hearing, that school kids can keep ring tones secret from their teachers if pitched high enough, that sound is a transmission of energy, not a movement of molecules, although they seem to move a bit, too, and we saw this demonstrated by a Slinky.

All this, and I still don’t know (or know enough about)...

Why I prefer Mozart and Dvorak over most other composers. Well, I sort of know.

Why I like hearing music in the first place.

Why I listen to anything, but play only classical.

Why the best musicians turn professional and many then lose their love of performing.

What music does that makes it so pleasing – or unpleasant.

How the thought that we now need a series of chromatic eighth notes in a particular order at a particular tempo at specific pitches for a specific length of time with a slight emphasis on the second of each group of four, at an increasing volume that gradually separates itself from the surrounding sounds in order to bring the listener’s attention to itself – I don’t know how something inside the player can direct limbs and fingers to create the conditions – virtually instantly – to produce these particular notes in that particular way – and then to be able to repeat the sequence when needed.

Why one performer astounds and another bores.

How playing music is similar to learning a language. It is exactly like learning a language.

What one piece of music for cello is my favorite.

Can one separate the composer’s biography from the music? Should one?

Composer’s “signatures” – repeating tropes – and why no one objects to this kind of shorthand.

The alienated feeling in an orchestra vs in a small group; the dysfunction of groups.

Whatever happened to music / art / culture in the schools?

Why I like one cello more than another; why I like mine.

The effect of a bow on a particular instrument.

Why we think of “baroque” music (approx. 1600 - 1750) as so exotic it requires different instruments and bows and styles to play well; and we think that those things are just ‘normal’ and usual when playing “classical” music. In other words, why is one era exotic and another just the usual thing?

The answer may lie in the sheer volume of music written in the classical era – 1750 - 1900. That’s the sweet spot for great stuff and it’s when most modern instruments reached their final/highest development.

I’m talking here of classical music, because in truth, although I love many genres and hear lots of different kinds of music, I most prefer the classic classical kind of music – the music that was created from Bach to Brahms – 1700 to 1900. That is my particular sweet spot, and in that two hundred year period can be found more than enough meat to feed me the rest of my life.

The music I usually play spans maybe 200 years. The music I listen to (other than classical) spans only my lifetime – from the 1950s to the present. Life would not be worth living without the blues, early Bob Dylan, David Bromberg, John Prine, Ry Cooder. If I was deaf I’d feel it through the thumping and vibrations.

I started out on drums because the idea of banging on things appealed to me. A lot. Based on a written test I apparently aced, which was administered to graduating sixth graders in San Francisco, on the first day of Band, Mr Jenkins from the string orchestra entered the room, called my name, and asked me to drop the drumsticks and follow him next door, where another room full of junior high adolescents awaited. The tall girls and boys were put behind basses. The smallest people on violins. In the middle, violas; and I guess the regular-sized people on cellos. The rest is history.

We played on beat up instruments that had been banged upon and carried home for probably decades, predating the Civil War, or at least WW II. We used gut strings, which made our sound warm and appealing, but those strings were devilishly difficult to keep in tune and when one snapped it could slap you in the face. To this day I’m chary of staring down at the high quality steel strings on my current cello.

Think about it: A middle sized middle school in a middle sized city had a band teacher, a band room and all the instruments; and a string orchestra, a strings teacher, and all the instruments. I was there for two years. In the second year the people who had started with me were performing Beethoven’s Fifth symphony (well, parts of it) for the school assembly. Our school colors were red and gray. I’ve always liked red and gray together.

When I got to my private boy’s college prep high school, entrance by examination only, no tuition, music existed there because the charismatic English teacher (also a published writer) sponsored some boys who wanted to try playing in a string quartet. We performed for the school assembly, too. But the difference, even then – public schools could sustain large music programs – private schools maybe not so much. This is an important point: The boys who played instruments in high school and later, often got their start as I did, in a public school band or orchestra. These graduates still staff the bulk of amateur orchestras and fill the ranks of amateur chamber music workshops, and the audience for classical pieces. And we’re very very gray these days. Joselyn started on the violin in school.

My mother much preferred cello over drums, so she bought me lessons. Three memories stand out from that period: 1. At my teacher Bonnie Hampton’s house in Berkeley I glanced into what I remember as a dark, dimly lit room, and saw the famous Griller String Quartet talking with each other in rehearsal, with Colin Hampton on cello. They appeared to me as tired, strange, old men who smelled musty. I never heard them play. 2. One day at the SF Conservatory where Bonnie also taught, while waiting for my lesson I heard another cellist, my age, playing for the teacher. After a few seconds I had the startling realization that I would never be able to play nearly as beautifully, and I’d better think of a different career than music. 3. Lest you think I was always graceful about all this: I hated practicing so much that my mother ended up placing a kitchen timer in my room and starting it when I picked up my cello. At one point I reached into my closet and punched a fist sized hole through the side of the cello, right through the canvas case. The violin shop in Oakland fixed it as if it had never happened. I told my parents I had dropped it. They never disputed that tale, the same way they believed I hadn’t been leering at the bra ads in Sears catalogs.

NOTES

Speaking of the best violins in the world... they are difficult to identify, even by experts, blindfolded.

About the difference between mechanically produced music (aka drum machines) and human made -- try this. If you have a metronome (you can download a metronome app on your smartypants phone, too), run it along with some slower piece of classical music -- the slow movement of a violin concerto or sonata, say... and you'll soon discover that the better the performance the more "wrong" the metronome. In other words, part of the music is to push and pull the beat as needed to create the most powerful effects... often subtle enough not be noticed, but the metronome will pick it up as it goes out of phase with how the piece started. Same true no doubt with jazz and many other genres.

An excellent book and the one I mentioned this morning -- esp. the chapter where the author Arnold Steinhardt (first violin, Guaneri String Quartet) tries to recreate the experience of playing well with others is titled Indivisible By Four, A String Quartet in Search of Harmony, available in paperback. I can't find this book on my shelves, or I'd loan it to you. I mistakenly today gave Richard the title The Four and the One by David Rounds, which is also an interesting book on string quartets, but not the one I had in mind. Steinhardt's two books (the other is a first rate memoir, Violin Dreams) are very much worth your reading time. Lots of fun.

Another book -- in answer to the question "what is your one favorite piece of cello music?" is The Cello Suites, JS Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece by Eric Siblin.

The Civil War and the Trojan War

Sometimes the books you read talk to each other. Something you read about the Civil War reminds you of the Trojan War which in turn makes you think of something in the mystery novel that kept you up until – gasp – 5 o'clock this morning.

A kind salesperson sent me an advance copy of Song of Achilles by scholar and first-time novelist Madeline Miller. I dove into the old story made new. How Achilles was raised in a castle in Phthia, "set in a northern crook of land between the ridges of Mount Othrys and the sea," how the exiled prince Patroclus came to live there and how Achilles and Patroclus became lifelong friends and lovers, through war and the inevitable tragic ending.

The gods are alive in Song of Achilles and they are dangerous. The reader rushes to the end. My friend would have forgotten to exit her airplane had the flight attendant not tapped her on the shoulder and said it's time to get your bag down, honey.

1861, The Civil War Awakening by historian Adam Goodheart at first glance couldn't be more different than this novel about the Trojan War. At second glance the books have a lot in common. There is the run up to wars that changed history and civilization itself. Zeitgeist evolving. Events that raise some up and drop others over a cliff. Gods and demi-gods messing up and messing things up. Things in common.

In 1861 Goodheart pries open with astounding scholarship and depth of feeling the largely overlooked months before the American Civil War broke out.

"...the last New Year's levee of the Buchanan administration was a sadly diminished affair... The White House... wallpaper was greasy in places where visitors had brushed against it with sweaty hands or pomaded hair; its carpets were worn down by muddy boots and stained with tobacco juice."

We meet the aging and ineffective Buchanan, but we also follow his splendid self-made rise from poverty to "one of the best-qualified men ever to win the presidency." We meet poet Walt Whitman, writer Henry Adams, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and on the train a young pregnant woman being conveyed back into slavery. Unforgettable people and vivid moments.

The ante-bellum Midwest – places such as Milwaukee, Madison, La Crosse, Kalamazoo – was a place of "imaginary canals and railroads," Goodheart writes. "Conjectural towns, utopian communities – that might vanish in a puff or, more remarkably, take shape out of nothing, just as the glorious statehouse arose on what had recently been a manure-covered pasture. Such a world required every person in it to be nimble, ambitious, adaptable, and free."

If the post-war American myth is forming in the Midwest, in Song of Achilles the stories are embodied in immortal gods with unfathomable power and all the faults of humans.

"'Thetis!' I screamed it into the snatching wind, my face towards the sea. 'Thetis!' The sun was high now... I drew a third breath.
 "'Do not speak my name again.'
"I whirled to face her and lost my balance... her skin was paler even than usual, the first winter's ice. Her lips were drawn back, to show her teeth. 'You are a fool,' she said. 'Get down. Your halfwit death will not save him.'"

Don't mess with Thetis, son.

Achilles as a boy chooses Patroclus to be his Therapon – "brother-in-arms sworn to a prince by oaths and love. In war, these men were his honor guard; in peace his closest advisors. It was a place of highest esteem." Their bond is lifelong and intimate. In the end it is the death of Patroclus that drives glorious Achilles to his death before the walls of Troy.

In antebellum America educated men knew the Greek stories. Some wrote and read in ancient Greek. For this and for other, less easily divined reasons "The idea of the brotherhood of man was more than an abstraction," Goodheart writes. "Not only did... friends address one another as 'Brother' ... they also felt intense emotional – at times also physical – bonds with one another... Young men in the mid-nineteenth century could be passionate in ways that some readers today find disorienting... They found nothing unorthodox in strolling arm in arm, addressing letters to 'my dearest' or 'lovely boy,' and sharing fond embraces in a common bed."

These books, set thousands of years apart, one a history and the other a novel, speak to the reader in related images. Love, hate, war. Reading them together in the same week created newly connected worlds to ponder.



NOTES

The mystery mentioned in the first paragraph is Stardust by Joseph Kanon. Washington Square Press paperback $15. ISBN 9781439156322. Kanon is a first rate writer. Do not read this book in bed unless you don't value sleep.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. HarperCollins hard cover $24.99 ISBN 9780062060617.

1861, The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart. Vintage paperback $16. ISBN 9781400032198.

Not from the book, but fascinating: General Grant and the Jewish Question

One of many Civil War timelines

New information on the number of deaths in the Civil War -- more than we supposed.