Listen up, Bradley. Stand at attention and hold on to that book. Chin up, shoulders back. That’s right. Good morning children, and welcome to your Summertime Books Boot Camp.
At least, that’s how I used to imagine camp, scarey and authoritarian, until I looked more closely. Across the country bookstores are running friendly summer camps for children. I’d go in a California second if I were eight years old.
Some camps are free half-day gatherings in a store with games, reading and snacks. Other camps are paid reservation only, elaborate productions staffed by expert booksellers and authors.
The bookstore camp phenomenon exemplified by one store in Brooklyn was written up recently in the New York Times. A couple of days ago Bookselling This Week, a newsletter for independent booksellers, filled in with reports from other stores.
Diane Capriola co-owns The Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, Georgia. Her store “has been holding summer camps since the store opened five years ago.” This year they have NINE camps. I am impressed.
Reading through the descriptions I’m thinking how great these camps sound. Their offerings range in cost from $210 to $325 for a week and promise to be rich in experiences and fun. Right now, all nine camps are filled, some with waiting lists.
Consider the Boo-yah for Boys! Camp: “Do you thirst for adventure and mystery? Do you love rockets and secret codes, hunting for treasure and figuring out how things work? In short, are you a boy who wants a whole week of TOTAL AWESOMENESS? Boo-yah for Boys! Camp is full of activities, learning, and adventure designed to entertain, engage, and elevate young boys. Join us, and become one of the few, the proud, the Boys of Summer!”
Other camps include Campology Camp, Camp Kane, Creative Writing Camp, American Girl Camp, Chess Camp, Camp Half-Blood, Goody for Girls! Camp, and The Name of This Camp is Secret.
In Campology Camp you’ll create an “ology” book of your own based on things you learned. In Creative Writing Camp kids learn techniques and meet authors; in other camps you might learn to sew, solve bank robberies, visit the vet, put on a talent show, do magic, decipher codes, solve clues to a mystery in competition with another bookstore’s summer camp, learn about girls in history, immerse yourself in Egyptian myths, capture the flag, race a chariot, and more.
There are many other bookstore summer camps in locations across the country, ranging from Brownstone Books in Brooklyn to Bookpeople in Austin, Texas, Towne Center Books in Pleasanton, California, to Eagle Harbor Book Company Bainbridge Island, Washington.
At Camp Eagle Harbor you’ll find free weekly day camps in the store. Expect a professional children’s theater workshop, a soccer program with workout in the store parking lot; a book group with free stuff, sneak previews, and a discussion; a spelling bee, a bead making workshop, a class in making sock puppets, and more.
Bookstores do need to reach out to new readers and find creative ways to relate to the surrounding community. The summer bookstore camp is one of the best ways bookstores accomplish all that.
If the idea clicks with you, check with your local bookstore or library for similar events. Here in Mendocino a local independent bookstore offers three summer events: Story Time with Allegra Fisher, Creative Writing Workshop for Middle and High School students, and a Summer Reading Club for Tweens and Teens.
Judy Wheeler and Bob Ditter at Towne Center Books in Pleasanton offer a Mystery Writing Camp for children. “Discover clues, crack codes, develop your own mystery stories and have a heap of fun! All kids aged 8-12 who love to read, write and solve mysteries are welcome!”
You don’t even need a bookstore to sponsor a camp... get together with other families you know and organize your own. There’s lots of summer left!
NOTES:
The Little Shop of Stories...
Bookselling This Week...
Another Bookselling This Week article on summer camps,
Camp Eagle Harbor...
Towne Center Books...
22 July 2010
15 July 2010
"What is this?" "It's a bookstore." "Oh, I don't read."
I’ve been out of the bookselling biz for some time now. That old familiar monkey on my back bothers someone else with his bad breath, scratchy claws and constant demands for attention.
This week it all came back – the adventure, the heartbreak, the humor of working in an independent bookstore. It seems that bookseller Cynthia Christensen of Book Stop in Hood River, Oregon, recently came down with pneumonia and laryngitis, and her husband stepped in for a couple of weeks in her place. He kept notes:
“Do you have this used?” (Customer holds up a book just released in paperback that day.) “It was just released today.” “But you're a used bookstore.” “Sorry, they haven't figured out how to print them used.”
“Do you have a restroom? My son needs to poop.”
“I'm just browsing.”
“I'm just killing time.”
“Can my kids stay here while I'm eating next door?”
“There's a hair on this sofa.”
“Can I make you a deal on this book?”
“Have you seen my wife?”
“Do you have maps?” (Looks at map, copies directions, incorrectly folds map, leaves it on the sofa.)
“Where am I?”
“Is this a library?”
“Was Abraham Lincoln really a vampire hunter?”
“How come this town has three bookstores?”
“I can get it cheaper on Amazon.”
“Can you describe the lay of the land around here?”
“Will my car get towed if I leave it in front of your store all day?”
“I'm looking for a book that has the word 'free' in the title.”
“Mom, I have to poop!”
“Do you have a chicken section? Goats?”
“Have you seen my children?”
“Mom, can I have this Clifford book?” “No, Clifford gets on my nerves.”
“Are all these books donated to you, so I can just take one?”
“Have you read all these books? When do you watch TV?”
“If I bring in some books, can you tell me what they're worth so I can sell them on eBay?”
“I never knew there was a library here.” “There is, but it's on the next street over.” “What is this?” “It's a bookstore.” “Oh, I don't read.”
“Dad, look a bookstore! Let's take a look.” “Why? It's just books.” “Come on, it will just take a minute.” “No, reading is stupid.”
“Are you hiring?” “No.” “I like books.” “So do I.” “I promise not to get in the way. I could just read or something.”
Another person: “Are you hiring?” “No.” “Good! Can I use your company's name?” “Why?” “I have to tell the Unemployment Department I can't find a job.”
That’s a sample of what Charlie Christensen recorded sitting in for two weeks at his wife’s bookstore in Oregon. Other booksellers tweeted in on the same subject. Some of their contributions:
From Robert Sindelar’s first year as a bookseller in 1990: “Do you have ‘Get Rich Overnight’” “No, but I can get it for you.” “Sorry, I can't wait.”
“Can you recommend a book? Something dark & creepy.” “How about Crime & Punishment?” “Nah. I don't really like Austen.”
“So people actually come in here and buy books?”
“Who wrote Jane Austen?”
Lanora Hurley, Next Chapter Bookshop: “Had a customer demand to know where the 'body shop' was & dragged staff person outside to point at sign that reads 'bookshop'.”
“I never like any of your books but you always play good in-store music.”
“Can you tell me who the author of Shakespeare is?”
“How many books are there in the trilogy?”
“Do you have the ‘Autobiography of Ben Franklin’? I'm not sure who wrote it.”
“Do you have Shakespeare in English?”
“Do you have those mystery novels by Angela Lansbury?” Replied ‘Yes’ and showed him the books by ‘Jessica Fletcher.’ He was happy.”
“Where do you keep fiction that's true?”
In Mendocino more than once we were asked “Where’s your non-fiction section?” Think about it.
NOTES:
The Hood River report in Shelf Awareness.
Some original “bookstore” tweets...
This week it all came back – the adventure, the heartbreak, the humor of working in an independent bookstore. It seems that bookseller Cynthia Christensen of Book Stop in Hood River, Oregon, recently came down with pneumonia and laryngitis, and her husband stepped in for a couple of weeks in her place. He kept notes:
“Do you have this used?” (Customer holds up a book just released in paperback that day.) “It was just released today.” “But you're a used bookstore.” “Sorry, they haven't figured out how to print them used.”
“Do you have a restroom? My son needs to poop.”
“I'm just browsing.”
“I'm just killing time.”
“Can my kids stay here while I'm eating next door?”
“There's a hair on this sofa.”
“Can I make you a deal on this book?”
“Have you seen my wife?”
“Do you have maps?” (Looks at map, copies directions, incorrectly folds map, leaves it on the sofa.)
“Where am I?”
“Is this a library?”
“Was Abraham Lincoln really a vampire hunter?”
“How come this town has three bookstores?”
“I can get it cheaper on Amazon.”
“Can you describe the lay of the land around here?”
“Will my car get towed if I leave it in front of your store all day?”
“I'm looking for a book that has the word 'free' in the title.”
“Mom, I have to poop!”
“Do you have a chicken section? Goats?”
“Have you seen my children?”
“Mom, can I have this Clifford book?” “No, Clifford gets on my nerves.”
“Are all these books donated to you, so I can just take one?”
“Have you read all these books? When do you watch TV?”
“If I bring in some books, can you tell me what they're worth so I can sell them on eBay?”
“I never knew there was a library here.” “There is, but it's on the next street over.” “What is this?” “It's a bookstore.” “Oh, I don't read.”
“Dad, look a bookstore! Let's take a look.” “Why? It's just books.” “Come on, it will just take a minute.” “No, reading is stupid.”
“Are you hiring?” “No.” “I like books.” “So do I.” “I promise not to get in the way. I could just read or something.”
Another person: “Are you hiring?” “No.” “Good! Can I use your company's name?” “Why?” “I have to tell the Unemployment Department I can't find a job.”
That’s a sample of what Charlie Christensen recorded sitting in for two weeks at his wife’s bookstore in Oregon. Other booksellers tweeted in on the same subject. Some of their contributions:
From Robert Sindelar’s first year as a bookseller in 1990: “Do you have ‘Get Rich Overnight’” “No, but I can get it for you.” “Sorry, I can't wait.”
“Can you recommend a book? Something dark & creepy.” “How about Crime & Punishment?” “Nah. I don't really like Austen.”
“So people actually come in here and buy books?”
“Who wrote Jane Austen?”
Lanora Hurley, Next Chapter Bookshop: “Had a customer demand to know where the 'body shop' was & dragged staff person outside to point at sign that reads 'bookshop'.”
“I never like any of your books but you always play good in-store music.”
“Can you tell me who the author of Shakespeare is?”
“How many books are there in the trilogy?”
“Do you have the ‘Autobiography of Ben Franklin’? I'm not sure who wrote it.”
“Do you have Shakespeare in English?”
“Do you have those mystery novels by Angela Lansbury?” Replied ‘Yes’ and showed him the books by ‘Jessica Fletcher.’ He was happy.”
“Where do you keep fiction that's true?”
In Mendocino more than once we were asked “Where’s your non-fiction section?” Think about it.
NOTES:
The Hood River report in Shelf Awareness.
Some original “bookstore” tweets...
08 July 2010
Plays Well With Others
What did we learn at summer camp? We learned to play well with others, whether it was a Mozart string quartet or a bassoon quintet composed by Alexander Spitzmuller-Harmersbach, who lived from 1894 - 1962, or so it said in the Humboldt Chamber Music Workshop Program.
We learned that whoever designed the student dormitories, back when Humboldt State University was only a College, whoever that was must have used plans for state prisons when constructing these identical concrete cells decorated with tattered “Turn Out Lights When Not in Use” stickers dating back to the oil crisis of the 1970's.
Under a particularly difficult to move piece of furniture we discovered Rebecca’s driver’s license. How did Rebecca get a drink or drive a car without her license? How did she sign up for a library card?
Sometimes we REALLY fail to get along well with others. Take, for example, World War II. That extreme failure to cooperate is reflected in the novel I’m starting now, “Spies of the Balkans” by the excellent novelist Alan Furst.
We also fail to understand the needs of others when we allow shrinking budgets to destroy public libraries. These quiet sanctuaries are exactly the community places we need most – comfortable, central locations where information and people interact at no charge, with no commercials, where the tools of learning are mentored by experts, where people who need these things most benefit from using them.
Libraries usually are the first services to suffer cutbacks, yet what other publicly funded endeavor gives back so much for so little? Contrast spending on libraries with any part of our immense war budget. Try it on a bumper sticker:
"It Will Be a Great Day When Libraries Have All the Money They Need, & the Military Has to Hold a Bake Sale to Buy a Bomber."
Marilyn Johnson writes in the Los Angeles Times that librarians “represent the best civic value out there, an army of resourceful workers that can help us compete in the world.” Not to mention help children dream.
She says, “Those in cities that haven’t preserved their libraries, those less fortunate and baffled by technology, and our children will be the first to suffer. But sooner or later, we’ll all feel the loss as one of the most effective levelers of privilege and avenues of reinvention – one of the great engines of democracy – begins to disappear.”
I have long wondered how 19th century steel baron Andrew Carnegie came upon his campaign to fund free public libraries throughout the country, and pondered why Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Warren Buffet and other well-intentioned plutocrats do not loudly support public libraries. They must have people to tell them the news: the US gap between rich and poor is larger now than it’s been for eighty years.
Maybe they believe books are old-fashioned or dying. They would be wrong. They may not fully understand how modern libraries are successfully interfacing with the bright new electronic world.
Or maybe they do realize all this, but libraries are out of fashion for rich people. There is not a lot of Ted Conference glory involved in supporting the institution. That’s plain short-sighted, as most of us realize.
So the next time your local library is in the bulls eye for layoffs, cuts in hours and services, or outright closing, give out a shout in opposition. Make it politically painful to cut a library budget.
Many more citizens protest the closing of an animal shelter than bother about the loss of a bookmobile. Which facility is more important to our fellow humans? I ask you.
(MUSIC) You too, can receive WOB scripts in your email and review episodes you may have missed. To be on the list, please send a note to amiksak@gmail.com. I'm blogging at www.wordsonbooks.blogspot.com and I enjoy reading your comments there.
NOTES:
One place to purchase a version of the sticker quoted above on paper, or t-shirt, mug, baby apron, hooded sweatshirt, water bottle.
NEWS ARTICLE from the Ann Arbor Journal:
Michigan Peaceworks hosted its second satirical "Bake Sale for Bombs" Saturday evening at the intersection of State Street and North University in downtown Ann Arbor with the aim of promoting peace. Members of the group, however, were deterred from selling goods by both city and university police midway through the event.
Peaceworks, founded in 2002 in Ann Arbor, was initially created as a non-profit project devoted to preventing the Iraq War. With supporters from across Washtenaw County, the organization dedicates itself to raising awareness on the causes and effects of militarism, and other social justice issues.
For more of this story, click here.
On the gap between rich and poor...
IMPORTANT SELF-PROTECTING CAVEAT: I do understand that the people wise enough to support animal shelters are exactly the same people who understand the importance of libraries.
We learned that whoever designed the student dormitories, back when Humboldt State University was only a College, whoever that was must have used plans for state prisons when constructing these identical concrete cells decorated with tattered “Turn Out Lights When Not in Use” stickers dating back to the oil crisis of the 1970's.
Under a particularly difficult to move piece of furniture we discovered Rebecca’s driver’s license. How did Rebecca get a drink or drive a car without her license? How did she sign up for a library card?
Sometimes we REALLY fail to get along well with others. Take, for example, World War II. That extreme failure to cooperate is reflected in the novel I’m starting now, “Spies of the Balkans” by the excellent novelist Alan Furst.
We also fail to understand the needs of others when we allow shrinking budgets to destroy public libraries. These quiet sanctuaries are exactly the community places we need most – comfortable, central locations where information and people interact at no charge, with no commercials, where the tools of learning are mentored by experts, where people who need these things most benefit from using them.
Libraries usually are the first services to suffer cutbacks, yet what other publicly funded endeavor gives back so much for so little? Contrast spending on libraries with any part of our immense war budget. Try it on a bumper sticker:
"It Will Be a Great Day When Libraries Have All the Money They Need, & the Military Has to Hold a Bake Sale to Buy a Bomber."
Marilyn Johnson writes in the Los Angeles Times that librarians “represent the best civic value out there, an army of resourceful workers that can help us compete in the world.” Not to mention help children dream.
She says, “Those in cities that haven’t preserved their libraries, those less fortunate and baffled by technology, and our children will be the first to suffer. But sooner or later, we’ll all feel the loss as one of the most effective levelers of privilege and avenues of reinvention – one of the great engines of democracy – begins to disappear.”
I have long wondered how 19th century steel baron Andrew Carnegie came upon his campaign to fund free public libraries throughout the country, and pondered why Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Warren Buffet and other well-intentioned plutocrats do not loudly support public libraries. They must have people to tell them the news: the US gap between rich and poor is larger now than it’s been for eighty years.
Maybe they believe books are old-fashioned or dying. They would be wrong. They may not fully understand how modern libraries are successfully interfacing with the bright new electronic world.
Or maybe they do realize all this, but libraries are out of fashion for rich people. There is not a lot of Ted Conference glory involved in supporting the institution. That’s plain short-sighted, as most of us realize.
So the next time your local library is in the bulls eye for layoffs, cuts in hours and services, or outright closing, give out a shout in opposition. Make it politically painful to cut a library budget.
Many more citizens protest the closing of an animal shelter than bother about the loss of a bookmobile. Which facility is more important to our fellow humans? I ask you.
(MUSIC) You too, can receive WOB scripts in your email and review episodes you may have missed. To be on the list, please send a note to amiksak@gmail.com. I'm blogging at www.wordsonbooks.blogspot.com and I enjoy reading your comments there.
NOTES:
One place to purchase a version of the sticker quoted above on paper, or t-shirt, mug, baby apron, hooded sweatshirt, water bottle.
NEWS ARTICLE from the Ann Arbor Journal:
Michigan Peaceworks hosted its second satirical "Bake Sale for Bombs" Saturday evening at the intersection of State Street and North University in downtown Ann Arbor with the aim of promoting peace. Members of the group, however, were deterred from selling goods by both city and university police midway through the event.
Peaceworks, founded in 2002 in Ann Arbor, was initially created as a non-profit project devoted to preventing the Iraq War. With supporters from across Washtenaw County, the organization dedicates itself to raising awareness on the causes and effects of militarism, and other social justice issues.
For more of this story, click here.
On the gap between rich and poor...
IMPORTANT SELF-PROTECTING CAVEAT: I do understand that the people wise enough to support animal shelters are exactly the same people who understand the importance of libraries.
24 June 2010
Found this in Heathrow...
In London last month I picked up a nice, fat paperback “The Making of Modern Britain, From Queen Victoria to VE Day,” by Andrew Marr, to read while flying across the Atlantic. It took me weeks to finish (the plane ride only lasted 10 hours) and I enjoyed every information-packed page.
The fact that a Scotsman wrote it primarily for an English audience makes the project even more interesting. An American reader becomes a bemused bystander, listening to the Brit-speak, fascinated to find out what they may have to say about us.
By Brit-speak, I mean “this syren (sic), this goat-footed bard, this half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity” (John Maynard Keynes describing the politician Lloyd George). Marr does call that description “going it a bit.”
Marr takes for granted that his readers have heard of Lloyd George and King Edward VII, Ben Tillet, Lord Kitchener, Mr Rolls and Mr Royce, the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, Music Halls, and more. But do the British know where the common knowledge differs from historical fact? The detailed argument Marr offers is fascinating.
One example is the British evacuation through Dunkirk in June, 1940. Marr writes, “One can peel away the layers of misremembering for ever... Men did fight for places on the boats. Others became wildly drunk, or broke down. It is not true that the British army was saved by flotillas of little pleasure boats taken across the Channel by their plucky owners. Many fishermeen, lifeboatmen and commercial boat owners refused point blank to help... The Royal Navy was always in the lead, taking absurd risks and suffering severe casualties to get the troops away. Nor it is true that the (soldiers) returned home full of contempt for Jerry and determined to get back to Europe and fight as soon as possibile. There are many eyewitness and first-person accounts of demoralized, angry, near-mutinous men, shattered and humiliated, returning to the English ports.”
“Looking back,” he says, “we learn to see ourselves more sharply. Our forebears were living on the lip of the future, just as we are. Their illusions about what was to come should make us, right now, a little humble. They were tough, passionate and young, however ancient they seem now.”
Marr vividly describes the Edwardian-era British as “very far, and strangely near... Few of us would feel at home there for any length of time. Every town had places where the children were literally shoeless and where people were withering... from malnutrition. The smells of the town included human excrement and unwashed bodies, along with tobacco, beer, coal smoke and the rich reek of horse... Every middle-class household had a maid, or maids, a cook, and often a gardener or groom. Class distinction was not an abstract thing, but present in most houses, standing quietly in the room.”
It’s familiar, but somehow strange. In 1908 there already was deep-seated unease about the growing power of the Kaiser. One journalist “warned a friend to get rid of his German nanny because, as a keen cyclist, she was almost certainly a military agent.” Others claimed the “German high command had a secret civilian army hidden in England, posing as waiters, clerks, bakers, hairdressers and servants.” According to one Member of Parliament “there were 66,000 German reserve soldiers living secretly in the Home Counties with an arms dump at Charing Cross, just across the road from (Parliament).”
The mania erupted again at the beginning of the Second World War. “Unfortunate Germans, Austrians and Italians were rounded up and sent to internment camps in the north of England or on the Isle of Man... of these many were Jewish professional people who had fled Hitler – the Isle of Man camp became a bubbling center of culture unmatched almost anywhere else in wartime Europe.”
“The Making of Modern Britain” brilliantly pulls together hugely diverse historic strands into a clear narrative, while oddly omitting events that took place in British colonies. It happened like this, to these people. Decisions, votes, wartime events could have gone another way; but this is how it turned out. This book is an important, easy-to-digest effort to renew the historical record, a project important to any modern citizen in whatever country.
NOTES:
Andrew Marr earlier wrote “A History of Modern Britain,” taking the story to current times. Both books were big sellers in the UK, and both were the basis for BBC documentaries. As far as I can tell, the BBC does not allow North American viewers to view them. There may be other ways to view or sample these programs, and if you find them, please let me know.
IMPORTED ENGLISH EDITION: “The Making of Modern Britain” by Andrew Marr. MacMillan UK hard cover $34.95. ISBN 0230709427.
IMPORTED ENGLISH EDITION: “A History of Modern Britain” by Andrew Marr. Pan Publishing UK paperback $15.95. ISBN 0330511475.
US EDITION: “The Making of Modern Britain” will appear in a US paperback version in November 2010. $14.95. ISBN 0330510991.
About the WWII internments: “By 1943 the vast majority of internees had been released to do war work.”
Two BBC pages on the author... and this one...
To make the Dunkirk story more clear: There was of course a flotilla of little boats of all kinds, including ferries... they got across the channel under the eye and with the help of the Royal Navy, which towed many. The main use of the small boats was to move troops off the Dunkirk beach (the docks were destroyed by then) and ferry them to the large Royal Navy ships offshore which then transported them home. Few of the small boats made the round trip unaided, and none or almost none carried soldiers all the way back. Overall about 338,000 men were rescued. Of that number 123,000 were French. Many more French would have been left behind if Churchill had not insisted on an additional day of rescue by his navy. As it happened, 30,000 or more French soldiers had to be left behind to surrender to the Germans.
The fact that a Scotsman wrote it primarily for an English audience makes the project even more interesting. An American reader becomes a bemused bystander, listening to the Brit-speak, fascinated to find out what they may have to say about us.
By Brit-speak, I mean “this syren (sic), this goat-footed bard, this half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity” (John Maynard Keynes describing the politician Lloyd George). Marr does call that description “going it a bit.”
Marr takes for granted that his readers have heard of Lloyd George and King Edward VII, Ben Tillet, Lord Kitchener, Mr Rolls and Mr Royce, the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, Music Halls, and more. But do the British know where the common knowledge differs from historical fact? The detailed argument Marr offers is fascinating.
One example is the British evacuation through Dunkirk in June, 1940. Marr writes, “One can peel away the layers of misremembering for ever... Men did fight for places on the boats. Others became wildly drunk, or broke down. It is not true that the British army was saved by flotillas of little pleasure boats taken across the Channel by their plucky owners. Many fishermeen, lifeboatmen and commercial boat owners refused point blank to help... The Royal Navy was always in the lead, taking absurd risks and suffering severe casualties to get the troops away. Nor it is true that the (soldiers) returned home full of contempt for Jerry and determined to get back to Europe and fight as soon as possibile. There are many eyewitness and first-person accounts of demoralized, angry, near-mutinous men, shattered and humiliated, returning to the English ports.”
“Looking back,” he says, “we learn to see ourselves more sharply. Our forebears were living on the lip of the future, just as we are. Their illusions about what was to come should make us, right now, a little humble. They were tough, passionate and young, however ancient they seem now.”
Marr vividly describes the Edwardian-era British as “very far, and strangely near... Few of us would feel at home there for any length of time. Every town had places where the children were literally shoeless and where people were withering... from malnutrition. The smells of the town included human excrement and unwashed bodies, along with tobacco, beer, coal smoke and the rich reek of horse... Every middle-class household had a maid, or maids, a cook, and often a gardener or groom. Class distinction was not an abstract thing, but present in most houses, standing quietly in the room.”
It’s familiar, but somehow strange. In 1908 there already was deep-seated unease about the growing power of the Kaiser. One journalist “warned a friend to get rid of his German nanny because, as a keen cyclist, she was almost certainly a military agent.” Others claimed the “German high command had a secret civilian army hidden in England, posing as waiters, clerks, bakers, hairdressers and servants.” According to one Member of Parliament “there were 66,000 German reserve soldiers living secretly in the Home Counties with an arms dump at Charing Cross, just across the road from (Parliament).”
The mania erupted again at the beginning of the Second World War. “Unfortunate Germans, Austrians and Italians were rounded up and sent to internment camps in the north of England or on the Isle of Man... of these many were Jewish professional people who had fled Hitler – the Isle of Man camp became a bubbling center of culture unmatched almost anywhere else in wartime Europe.”
“The Making of Modern Britain” brilliantly pulls together hugely diverse historic strands into a clear narrative, while oddly omitting events that took place in British colonies. It happened like this, to these people. Decisions, votes, wartime events could have gone another way; but this is how it turned out. This book is an important, easy-to-digest effort to renew the historical record, a project important to any modern citizen in whatever country.
NOTES:
Andrew Marr earlier wrote “A History of Modern Britain,” taking the story to current times. Both books were big sellers in the UK, and both were the basis for BBC documentaries. As far as I can tell, the BBC does not allow North American viewers to view them. There may be other ways to view or sample these programs, and if you find them, please let me know.
IMPORTED ENGLISH EDITION: “The Making of Modern Britain” by Andrew Marr. MacMillan UK hard cover $34.95. ISBN 0230709427.
IMPORTED ENGLISH EDITION: “A History of Modern Britain” by Andrew Marr. Pan Publishing UK paperback $15.95. ISBN 0330511475.
US EDITION: “The Making of Modern Britain” will appear in a US paperback version in November 2010. $14.95. ISBN 0330510991.
About the WWII internments: “By 1943 the vast majority of internees had been released to do war work.”
Two BBC pages on the author... and this one...
To make the Dunkirk story more clear: There was of course a flotilla of little boats of all kinds, including ferries... they got across the channel under the eye and with the help of the Royal Navy, which towed many. The main use of the small boats was to move troops off the Dunkirk beach (the docks were destroyed by then) and ferry them to the large Royal Navy ships offshore which then transported them home. Few of the small boats made the round trip unaided, and none or almost none carried soldiers all the way back. Overall about 338,000 men were rescued. Of that number 123,000 were French. Many more French would have been left behind if Churchill had not insisted on an additional day of rescue by his navy. As it happened, 30,000 or more French soldiers had to be left behind to surrender to the Germans.
18 June 2010
Anthony Hayward gives Hayward a Bad Name
I posted a question on Facebook today: “It’s time to think up another episode of Words on Books. Any suggestions?
“Graphic novels!” my daughter Sophia said. “Books by people named Anthony, or about people named Anthony,” a friend wrote. “Blockbusters you’re just getting around to,” said another.
As of two years ago, Anthony was the seventh most popular male name for US newborns. Google reports there are 9,435 people named Anthony living in Nevada, 4,658 in Utah. I think there must be more than that. Anthony derives from Antonius, a Roman family name (see: Mark Antony, of Cleopatra fame). St. Anthony the Great founded Christian monasticism. Dozens of Anthonys, and Tonys have become famous -- think Blair and Banderos, Bennett and Bourdain, Curtis, Hopkins, Randall, Shaloub, even made up people such as Tony Soprano, Anthony Goldstein from Harry Potter, Anthony Stark AKA Iron Man. Then there’s Tony Hayward of BP, now turning “Hayward” into a bad name worldwide.
Need I say more? Probably not and never again. But thanks for the idea!
I have been trying to find a way to work in a plug for the Soapbox essays that appear each week in back of the trade magazine Publishers Weekly. You would never normally get a chance to read these, because why would you pick up a rag concerned with publisher financials or employment gossip? Oh, that’s why – for the reviews. And the short, witty essays.
Most recently Richard Curtis presented a “Sneak Peek at Floppatronic’s Reader” which of course turns out to be a printed book, “operated by two hands, one to support it and one to activate the page-turning function.”
I enjoyed Annabelle Gurwitch’s piece “You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up” on “the highlights, lowlights, and downright misguided adventure of writing a book with your husband.”
In another issue literary agent Stephen Barbara explained “How Stephanie Meyer Cramps My Style.”
“Authors... expect me to know things,” Barbara writes. “The number one question I am asked by these aspiring writers is ‘How do I break in?’ ... Over time I came up with a nearly airtight answer. I quoted Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hours of Practice rule. I told of the 100-some rejection letters F. Scott Fitzgerald nailed to the wall of his office before having his first story accepted... And then I learned the story of how Stephenie Meyer (author of the Twilight Series) broke in... one night Meyer had a dream, feverishly wrote the complete manuscript of ‘Twilight’ over the next three months, sent it to several literary agencies... sold her series at auction for a then-unprecedented $750,000 advance... knocked J.K. Rowling from her top spot on the bestseller list, and in the space of four years became the world’s most popular author.”
He concludes, “I have a new response... read until you nearly go blind; write till your fingers are numb. Be ready to face years of rejection. Or just wait for a dream to hit you and transcribe a phenomenal world-wide bestseller in three months’ time. Either way, it’s the best answer I’ve got, these days.”
Richard Curtis at the end of last year spun out “The Yr of the Tweet, A look back at 2009" in verse: “Oh Muse, I pray, your face make visible, And help this bard pen something risible...”
“Novelists who couldn’t get work
Found it on the social network,
Washed up hacks got off their bums
And took to texting with their thumbs.
Now any writer sane or dotty
Calls himself a twitterati,
Producing literary treasures
In hundred forty unit measures.
The future Milton, Pope or Keats –
Immortalized in deathless tweets!”
NOTES:
Visit Publishers Weekly for additional Features, Foreword, Bestsellers and Reviews.
Annabelle Gurwitch and husband Jeff Kahn are co-authors of “You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up: A Love Story” Crown Publishing Group hard cover $24. ISBN 030746377X. Due in paperback in January, 2011.
The Facebook discussion, and too bad about privacy, people:
It's time to think up another episode of Words on Books. Any suggestions?
Sophia Ferrel: Graphic novels!
Anthony Miksak: I have Donald Duck in Italian... otherwise, nothing at hand. Good idea, though.
Russ Harvey: Blockbusters you're just getting around to. I've seen every Pride & Prejudice adaptation ever made, but actually hadn't read it until last year. Had never faked it, though, in case you were wondering.
Lisa B Lai: Books by people named Anthony. Or about people named Anthony.
7 hours ago · Unlike · 1 person ·
Anthony Miksak: c'mon people....! OK Lisa... I vamped up a couple of paragraphs on "Anthony".... I'm that desperate...
Christie Olson Day: Why is the culture obsessed with zombies, vampires, and dystopian fantasy like the new and absolutely rockin' bestseller The Passage? Discuss!
Claire Amanno: to iphone or not to iphone... does research qualify for words on books?
“Graphic novels!” my daughter Sophia said. “Books by people named Anthony, or about people named Anthony,” a friend wrote. “Blockbusters you’re just getting around to,” said another.
As of two years ago, Anthony was the seventh most popular male name for US newborns. Google reports there are 9,435 people named Anthony living in Nevada, 4,658 in Utah. I think there must be more than that. Anthony derives from Antonius, a Roman family name (see: Mark Antony, of Cleopatra fame). St. Anthony the Great founded Christian monasticism. Dozens of Anthonys, and Tonys have become famous -- think Blair and Banderos, Bennett and Bourdain, Curtis, Hopkins, Randall, Shaloub, even made up people such as Tony Soprano, Anthony Goldstein from Harry Potter, Anthony Stark AKA Iron Man. Then there’s Tony Hayward of BP, now turning “Hayward” into a bad name worldwide.
Need I say more? Probably not and never again. But thanks for the idea!
I have been trying to find a way to work in a plug for the Soapbox essays that appear each week in back of the trade magazine Publishers Weekly. You would never normally get a chance to read these, because why would you pick up a rag concerned with publisher financials or employment gossip? Oh, that’s why – for the reviews. And the short, witty essays.
Most recently Richard Curtis presented a “Sneak Peek at Floppatronic’s Reader” which of course turns out to be a printed book, “operated by two hands, one to support it and one to activate the page-turning function.”
I enjoyed Annabelle Gurwitch’s piece “You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up” on “the highlights, lowlights, and downright misguided adventure of writing a book with your husband.”
In another issue literary agent Stephen Barbara explained “How Stephanie Meyer Cramps My Style.”
“Authors... expect me to know things,” Barbara writes. “The number one question I am asked by these aspiring writers is ‘How do I break in?’ ... Over time I came up with a nearly airtight answer. I quoted Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hours of Practice rule. I told of the 100-some rejection letters F. Scott Fitzgerald nailed to the wall of his office before having his first story accepted... And then I learned the story of how Stephenie Meyer (author of the Twilight Series) broke in... one night Meyer had a dream, feverishly wrote the complete manuscript of ‘Twilight’ over the next three months, sent it to several literary agencies... sold her series at auction for a then-unprecedented $750,000 advance... knocked J.K. Rowling from her top spot on the bestseller list, and in the space of four years became the world’s most popular author.”
He concludes, “I have a new response... read until you nearly go blind; write till your fingers are numb. Be ready to face years of rejection. Or just wait for a dream to hit you and transcribe a phenomenal world-wide bestseller in three months’ time. Either way, it’s the best answer I’ve got, these days.”
Richard Curtis at the end of last year spun out “The Yr of the Tweet, A look back at 2009" in verse: “Oh Muse, I pray, your face make visible, And help this bard pen something risible...”
“Novelists who couldn’t get work
Found it on the social network,
Washed up hacks got off their bums
And took to texting with their thumbs.
Now any writer sane or dotty
Calls himself a twitterati,
Producing literary treasures
In hundred forty unit measures.
The future Milton, Pope or Keats –
Immortalized in deathless tweets!”
NOTES:
Visit Publishers Weekly for additional Features, Foreword, Bestsellers and Reviews.
Annabelle Gurwitch and husband Jeff Kahn are co-authors of “You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up: A Love Story” Crown Publishing Group hard cover $24. ISBN 030746377X. Due in paperback in January, 2011.
The Facebook discussion, and too bad about privacy, people:
It's time to think up another episode of Words on Books. Any suggestions?
Sophia Ferrel: Graphic novels!
Anthony Miksak: I have Donald Duck in Italian... otherwise, nothing at hand. Good idea, though.
Russ Harvey: Blockbusters you're just getting around to. I've seen every Pride & Prejudice adaptation ever made, but actually hadn't read it until last year. Had never faked it, though, in case you were wondering.
Lisa B Lai: Books by people named Anthony. Or about people named Anthony.
7 hours ago · Unlike · 1 person ·
Anthony Miksak: c'mon people....! OK Lisa... I vamped up a couple of paragraphs on "Anthony".... I'm that desperate...
Christie Olson Day: Why is the culture obsessed with zombies, vampires, and dystopian fantasy like the new and absolutely rockin' bestseller The Passage? Discuss!
Claire Amanno: to iphone or not to iphone... does research qualify for words on books?
10 June 2010
Letter to My Daughter Sophia
A letter to my daughter, after reading “The Year is ‘42” by Ukranian/French author Nella Bielski...
Dear Sophia,
My grandfather Eli, your great-grandfather, once showed me a scar on his head he said was delivered by a Cossack’s sword. Maybe it was a tale made up to impress a little boy, but I could see the red scar on his glistening bald head.
In the year 1908, Eli and his future wife Ida came to America from Byelorussia, fleeing bad times for Jews. They had been living, unknown to each other, in neighboring cities, Minsk and Pinsk, where Jews once made up more than half of the population.
Eli met Ida in New York City. A relative urged him go knock on the door of this lovely young woman. He did, and soon the two refugees had married. They moved to San Francisco, where Eli worked as a house painter, Ida as a seamstress.
They lived on Wood Street, a one block microcosm of the old country. Yiddish was spoken up and down the street and housewives competed to see whose laundry appeared earliest on backyard clotheslines.
Ida and Eli had one daughter, Florence, my mother, your grandmother. She commuted by ferry to school at UC Berkeley, then found depression-era employment in the news department of a Chicago radio station.
That’s where she met my father, Joe Miksak, your grandfather. He was a second generation Czech Catholic, an out-of-work actor reading news for a living. Florence wrote scripts and watched him read them through studio glass. Together they attended the Art Institute of Chicago, working with Bauhaus great Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, then moved to Greenwich Village in New York, where their friends were bohemian artists and performers.
On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Joe heard on the radio the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Next day he enlisted in the Army. “What did you do in the war, daddy?” I would later ask, and he would say “I never was in the fighting. I was officer in charge of wash cloths.”
First Lieutenant Miksak took part in the invasion of north Africa, then the invasion of Sicily. He was sent home near the end of the war, and I was born in 1945. Ever since, I’ve associated my birth with the first atom bombs and the beginning of a middle-class era of hope and prosperity. My brother Matthew came along in 1950. Much later, in Mendocino in 1976, you were born, Sophia.
“The Year is ‘42" is an uncorrected proof from 2004, back when I ran a bookstore. I have no idea why I picked it off the shelf last night, but there it was and here it is now.
It’s a short novel that takes a group of German and Russian characters through one difficult year of the Second World War. Kurt Bazinger, a Wehrmacht officer, is living well in Paris under German occupation. Gradually he comes to the attention of the SS and also of resistance forces. He volunteers for the Eastern Front, and as the publisher writes, “a beautiful, stoic Russian doctor with her own painful history will heal Karl and offer him hope and goodness in the midst of hell.”
This book feels real, Sophia. Wallowing in death and destruction I found myself reflecting how fortunate we are to be alive today, progeny of an unbroken line of survivors that stretches back through countless generations.
It is a powerful thing, survival. It’s certainly something to ponder.
NOTES:
“The Year Is '42" by Nella Bielski, translated by John Berger. Vintage Books paperback $12.95. ISBN 1400076641. First published in 2004.
Nella Bielski also co-wrote a two-part novel with John Berger:
“Oranges for the Son of Alexander Levy” (Arcadia Books paperback $12.99 ISBN 1900850338) is described by the publisher as “Two novels in one. ‘Isabelle’ is John Berger and Nella Bielski's powerful story in shots which brilliantly recreates the life of Isabelle Eberhardt. ‘Oranges for the Son of Alexander Levy’ is Nella Bielski's powerful meditation on the nature of love and loss ...
Nella Bielski is the author of several novels and has also written for the cinema. Her play A Question of Geography was staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company. She was born in the Ukraine and lives in Paris.
Dear Sophia,
My grandfather Eli, your great-grandfather, once showed me a scar on his head he said was delivered by a Cossack’s sword. Maybe it was a tale made up to impress a little boy, but I could see the red scar on his glistening bald head.
In the year 1908, Eli and his future wife Ida came to America from Byelorussia, fleeing bad times for Jews. They had been living, unknown to each other, in neighboring cities, Minsk and Pinsk, where Jews once made up more than half of the population.
Eli met Ida in New York City. A relative urged him go knock on the door of this lovely young woman. He did, and soon the two refugees had married. They moved to San Francisco, where Eli worked as a house painter, Ida as a seamstress.
They lived on Wood Street, a one block microcosm of the old country. Yiddish was spoken up and down the street and housewives competed to see whose laundry appeared earliest on backyard clotheslines.
Ida and Eli had one daughter, Florence, my mother, your grandmother. She commuted by ferry to school at UC Berkeley, then found depression-era employment in the news department of a Chicago radio station.
That’s where she met my father, Joe Miksak, your grandfather. He was a second generation Czech Catholic, an out-of-work actor reading news for a living. Florence wrote scripts and watched him read them through studio glass. Together they attended the Art Institute of Chicago, working with Bauhaus great Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, then moved to Greenwich Village in New York, where their friends were bohemian artists and performers.
On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Joe heard on the radio the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Next day he enlisted in the Army. “What did you do in the war, daddy?” I would later ask, and he would say “I never was in the fighting. I was officer in charge of wash cloths.”
First Lieutenant Miksak took part in the invasion of north Africa, then the invasion of Sicily. He was sent home near the end of the war, and I was born in 1945. Ever since, I’ve associated my birth with the first atom bombs and the beginning of a middle-class era of hope and prosperity. My brother Matthew came along in 1950. Much later, in Mendocino in 1976, you were born, Sophia.
“The Year is ‘42" is an uncorrected proof from 2004, back when I ran a bookstore. I have no idea why I picked it off the shelf last night, but there it was and here it is now.
It’s a short novel that takes a group of German and Russian characters through one difficult year of the Second World War. Kurt Bazinger, a Wehrmacht officer, is living well in Paris under German occupation. Gradually he comes to the attention of the SS and also of resistance forces. He volunteers for the Eastern Front, and as the publisher writes, “a beautiful, stoic Russian doctor with her own painful history will heal Karl and offer him hope and goodness in the midst of hell.”
This book feels real, Sophia. Wallowing in death and destruction I found myself reflecting how fortunate we are to be alive today, progeny of an unbroken line of survivors that stretches back through countless generations.
It is a powerful thing, survival. It’s certainly something to ponder.
NOTES:
“The Year Is '42" by Nella Bielski, translated by John Berger. Vintage Books paperback $12.95. ISBN 1400076641. First published in 2004.
Nella Bielski also co-wrote a two-part novel with John Berger:
“Oranges for the Son of Alexander Levy” (Arcadia Books paperback $12.99 ISBN 1900850338) is described by the publisher as “Two novels in one. ‘Isabelle’ is John Berger and Nella Bielski's powerful story in shots which brilliantly recreates the life of Isabelle Eberhardt. ‘Oranges for the Son of Alexander Levy’ is Nella Bielski's powerful meditation on the nature of love and loss ...
Nella Bielski is the author of several novels and has also written for the cinema. Her play A Question of Geography was staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company. She was born in the Ukraine and lives in Paris.
03 June 2010
Back and Forth Like a Rubber Band
We’ve been traveling again. Not globally, not locally, just Britain, Denmark, Italy. As if attached to a rubber band (“elastico” in Italian) we keep bouncing back to Europe.
I can report the Euro is down, the ash has ceased ashing all over everything, and two weeks ago Spring hit England like a Luftwaffe attack. An attack of hay fever, certainly. The British winter was endless and cold, then a sudden accession of heat and sunshine caused every tree in Hyde Park, Green Park and all the other parks to burst into bloom on one dangerous day.
Through cracked and bleeding eyeballs I think I saw swans with cygnets, ducks with ducklings, and a lovely gin-and-tonic sitting on a table near my dripping nose. Call it Hyde Park fever. Hang up if it calls on you.
Somehow, as always, we took along books and purchased others. This is where an E-book reader really could come in handy – Rick Steves and Lonely Planet at your fingertips. No need to tear out the London section from an old Fodor’s guide and toss the rest.
Still, no E-book reader in the world could have presented the fascinating record of voyages past presented by the lending library onboard the National Geographic Explorer. Previous passengers left behind a sort of mind map of those who take part in what the Geographic people call “expeditions.”
Those gently rocking shelves held a number of pastel-jacketed fluffy novels starring heartsick females, plenty of good-for-you books like “Field Guide to the Night Skies,” and mysteries charming and polite, or manly and bloody. These are the books people bring onboard, but never want to see again.
I donated my copy of Roddy Doyle’s 1999 novel “A Star Called Henry” not because I never want to see it again, but because my suitcase needed liposuction. I hope someone on a future expedition enjoys reading this novel about 1916 Ireland as much as I did.
“A Star Called Henry” is an entertaining and adventurous novel, both serious and painful. It’s part of a trilogy that concludes with the worthwhile but much less engrossing novel, “The Dead Republic.” Here, former Irish rebel Henry Smart peers backwards at a misspent life filled with adventure. Having run off to America, the Hollywood director John Ford rescues Smart and plans a film about his spectacular life, but that doesn’t work out well. Returned to Ireland, elements of the Provisional IRA take up Henry Smart as a long-lost but totally spurious “hero” of the revolution. There are moments in “The Dead Republic” as funny or poignant as anything in the first, rambunctious, tale, but overall it’s a bit plodding. The energy that burst out in “A Star Called Henry” cools off in a small town near Dublin, inhabited by a very old man.
I still have the middle novel to read, “Oh, Play That Thing,” and by all reports this one is great fun. Henry Smart starts a new life in America. He meets mobsters, peddles hooch, and partners with Louis Armstrong.
In trade for the Roddy Doyle book I snagged a copy of “Kavalier & Clay” by Michael Chabon, another book I’ve been meaning to read since it was published ten years ago. It has the mind-numbing overabundance of an early novel, spilling energy and asides all over the place. It is a multi-person love story, a history of the Golden Age of Comic Books, and a chronicle of Jewish angst before and during World War Two. No wonder so many have enjoyed this one.
Then there were the Italian versions of Mickey Mouse (“Topolino”) and Uncle Scrooge (“Zio Paperone”) I picked up in a bargain box in Venice, and Michelin guides, and grammars and workbooks and Andrew Marr’s “The Making of Modern Britain” and the writers we met and the things we did.
But that’s for another time, children. Glad to be back!
NOTES:
“A Star Called Henry” by Roddy Doyle. Penguin Books paperback $16. ISBN 0143034618.
“Oh, Play That Thing” by Roddy Doyle. Penguin Books paperback $14. ISBN 014303605X.
“The Dead Republic” by Roddy Doyle. Viking Books hard cover $26.95. ISBN 067002177.
I found this Washington Post Book World review of “The Dead Republic” enlightening:
“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” by Michael Chabon. Picador paperback $16. ISBN 0312282990.
I can report the Euro is down, the ash has ceased ashing all over everything, and two weeks ago Spring hit England like a Luftwaffe attack. An attack of hay fever, certainly. The British winter was endless and cold, then a sudden accession of heat and sunshine caused every tree in Hyde Park, Green Park and all the other parks to burst into bloom on one dangerous day.
Through cracked and bleeding eyeballs I think I saw swans with cygnets, ducks with ducklings, and a lovely gin-and-tonic sitting on a table near my dripping nose. Call it Hyde Park fever. Hang up if it calls on you.
Somehow, as always, we took along books and purchased others. This is where an E-book reader really could come in handy – Rick Steves and Lonely Planet at your fingertips. No need to tear out the London section from an old Fodor’s guide and toss the rest.
Still, no E-book reader in the world could have presented the fascinating record of voyages past presented by the lending library onboard the National Geographic Explorer. Previous passengers left behind a sort of mind map of those who take part in what the Geographic people call “expeditions.”
Those gently rocking shelves held a number of pastel-jacketed fluffy novels starring heartsick females, plenty of good-for-you books like “Field Guide to the Night Skies,” and mysteries charming and polite, or manly and bloody. These are the books people bring onboard, but never want to see again.
I donated my copy of Roddy Doyle’s 1999 novel “A Star Called Henry” not because I never want to see it again, but because my suitcase needed liposuction. I hope someone on a future expedition enjoys reading this novel about 1916 Ireland as much as I did.
“A Star Called Henry” is an entertaining and adventurous novel, both serious and painful. It’s part of a trilogy that concludes with the worthwhile but much less engrossing novel, “The Dead Republic.” Here, former Irish rebel Henry Smart peers backwards at a misspent life filled with adventure. Having run off to America, the Hollywood director John Ford rescues Smart and plans a film about his spectacular life, but that doesn’t work out well. Returned to Ireland, elements of the Provisional IRA take up Henry Smart as a long-lost but totally spurious “hero” of the revolution. There are moments in “The Dead Republic” as funny or poignant as anything in the first, rambunctious, tale, but overall it’s a bit plodding. The energy that burst out in “A Star Called Henry” cools off in a small town near Dublin, inhabited by a very old man.
I still have the middle novel to read, “Oh, Play That Thing,” and by all reports this one is great fun. Henry Smart starts a new life in America. He meets mobsters, peddles hooch, and partners with Louis Armstrong.
In trade for the Roddy Doyle book I snagged a copy of “Kavalier & Clay” by Michael Chabon, another book I’ve been meaning to read since it was published ten years ago. It has the mind-numbing overabundance of an early novel, spilling energy and asides all over the place. It is a multi-person love story, a history of the Golden Age of Comic Books, and a chronicle of Jewish angst before and during World War Two. No wonder so many have enjoyed this one.
Then there were the Italian versions of Mickey Mouse (“Topolino”) and Uncle Scrooge (“Zio Paperone”) I picked up in a bargain box in Venice, and Michelin guides, and grammars and workbooks and Andrew Marr’s “The Making of Modern Britain” and the writers we met and the things we did.
But that’s for another time, children. Glad to be back!
NOTES:
“A Star Called Henry” by Roddy Doyle. Penguin Books paperback $16. ISBN 0143034618.
“Oh, Play That Thing” by Roddy Doyle. Penguin Books paperback $14. ISBN 014303605X.
“The Dead Republic” by Roddy Doyle. Viking Books hard cover $26.95. ISBN 067002177.
I found this Washington Post Book World review of “The Dead Republic” enlightening:
“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” by Michael Chabon. Picador paperback $16. ISBN 0312282990.
23 May 2010
First impressions of Venice, and magic at La Fenice
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Dear Diary,
Venice is the world’s most beautiful half-dead city. Venice is Disneyland before there was Walt Disney. Venice no longer smells bad. Venice is beautiful in the early morning light, before the groups of name-necklaced tourists start their marches through the narrow alleys.
It is next to impossible to have a truly bad meal in most of Italy; very easy here in Venice. Everywhere, all the time, travel writers, visitors connected to TripAdvisor and similar web locations, journalists, even some guides, all of these are searching for the next great discovery. When an interesting or overlooked restaurant is located it is immediately swamped by those in the know. Whatever initially made it different or special disappears. The servers move with greater velocity; the kitchen cooks with less accuracy. The prices go up, everyone is fatigued, and there’s a line out the door and down the canal.
We had dinner in one of these places last night: La Zucca (the pumpkin), a small place in a lovely location at the foot of a small bridge, where a canal turns the corner around its building. It was packed the day before, when we made reservations, and packed most of Tuesday night. Joselyn and I and four fellow students from Venice Italian School sat and ordered. The words were hardly out of our mouths before the food was on the table. Later, we were asked to vacate the table for another group waiting outside. This was certainly fair, as we had paused to talk after dessert, but for several of us this was the first time we’d been kicked out of a restaurant for enjoying ourselves.
When the weather is perfect (sunny days not yet hot; a cooling breeze along the canals) and one has time, and a romantic imagination, Venice will seduce you.
In our case this is our third or fourth visit, and we are working – school each morning, and some homework to fit in each afternoon. We have noticed detritus floating in the canals, beggars on many bridges, gratuitous musicians, loud bars, graffiti on sacred walls and ordinary houses. It is not as magical as it might be.
Yet there is some magic. We are in a lovely apartment, with sounds of life all around us. Laundry stays outside until ten at night, and early in the morning baskets are let down on strings from high windows for others to fill with bread and milk. Recycling is efficient and frequent, the locals are not unanimously sour, and life goes on as Venice actually were Italy. It is not, but it’s located right next to it.
We stumbled into an extraordinary event on Tuesday, the second of two days of a strike that closed Opera La Fenice. We had tickets to Don Giovanni and because of the strike we went to the box office to obtain a refund. This kind of thing can be a horror in Italy – however, it went smoothly, surprise, surprise. On the square in front of La Fenice musicians were putting on an impromptu concert. An older gentleman appeared on the Opera steps to beckon everyone – this was several hundred people – inside. “Venga, Venga... siamo aperto oggi...” and sure enough what ordinarily requires an expensive tour ticket or an expensive opera ticket suddenly was free as air.
People poured into the Sala Grande and everywhere were craning their necks in astonishment at the beautifully restored gilded plaster work, the ceiling clock, the huge chandeliers, the uncountable rows of stacked box seats, the stage itself with the silver phoenix above it all... and the flashes went off in every direction. As the day wore on the ushers gave up trying to enforce their strict no camera rule. Eventually cameras were tolerated. Some flashers were chastised, others not.
The musicians, technicians and administration staff created an amazing day for themselves and everyone else, in protest to the strike (a minor guild had decided to strike) and to a forthcoming law that in effect will drastically cut funds for performing arts in Italy.
There were concerts for five solid hours: a wind quintet, bassoon quartet, a choir concert, brass ensemble, opera excerpts, string quartet, string quartet with clarinet, baroque music, and a final jazz concert in the early evening.
All free, all delivered by musicians in tennis shoes, Levis and t-shirts, playing music of the first quality, more or less without rehearsal. Wow.
In the Sala Apollinee we heard the entire opera chorus, fifty strong, singing from the surrounding balcony, angels on high. In front of us the Maestro conducting his singers far above, pointing now at the sopranos to his left, now the basses on the right, and two pianists playing opera excerpts four-hands. Again, wow.
We fell like idiots into a crazy moment that cannot be repeated. We had to leave after the string quartet played movements from Mozart’s “Dissonant” in C major; the Dvorak “American” and part of the Mozart clarinet quintet.
The protesters have a web site: http://www.firmiamo.it/decreto-legge-riforma-enti-lirici-d-italia-del-ministro-sandr/ and if the hyphens should be underlines, or I’ve mistyped, try googling them: “protest at La Fenice” should do it...
From their flyer: “... a protest against a new law, the Decreto Fondazioni Lirico-Sinfoniche... approved in the first week of May.
“The law, without any form of discussion with representatives of the sector... intends... to reform the structure of all theaters in Italy.... in a few years, and for certain orchestras in a few months, there will be no possibility of covering the costs for concerts and opera productions while keeping the artistic quality intact... this law... doesn’t reflect the need of reforms... instead it constitutes a dangerous attack to (sic) one of the main Italian cultural traditions.”
If you’d like to express your personal opinion on all this, send an email to MIBAC (www.beniculturali.it) and leave a message in the contact form.
MIBAC = Ministero dei Beni Culturali = Ministry of Cultural Benefits
It’s now 7:30. Joselyn is almost finished with her homework (verbi irregolari) and we’re about to walk down the street? fondamento? calle? rio? to a nearby restaurant we discovered yesterday. Few know about this place. Let’s keep it a secret between us and the Sunday Times, the NY Times, Rick Steves and the lonely ones at Lonely Planet, the fuddy ones at Fodors, the go go go ones at Let’s Go, the spaced out ones at TimeOut, and those inquisitive tour guides.
Do you have room for a hundred? Great! See you at seven.
Dear Diary,
Venice is the world’s most beautiful half-dead city. Venice is Disneyland before there was Walt Disney. Venice no longer smells bad. Venice is beautiful in the early morning light, before the groups of name-necklaced tourists start their marches through the narrow alleys.
It is next to impossible to have a truly bad meal in most of Italy; very easy here in Venice. Everywhere, all the time, travel writers, visitors connected to TripAdvisor and similar web locations, journalists, even some guides, all of these are searching for the next great discovery. When an interesting or overlooked restaurant is located it is immediately swamped by those in the know. Whatever initially made it different or special disappears. The servers move with greater velocity; the kitchen cooks with less accuracy. The prices go up, everyone is fatigued, and there’s a line out the door and down the canal.
We had dinner in one of these places last night: La Zucca (the pumpkin), a small place in a lovely location at the foot of a small bridge, where a canal turns the corner around its building. It was packed the day before, when we made reservations, and packed most of Tuesday night. Joselyn and I and four fellow students from Venice Italian School sat and ordered. The words were hardly out of our mouths before the food was on the table. Later, we were asked to vacate the table for another group waiting outside. This was certainly fair, as we had paused to talk after dessert, but for several of us this was the first time we’d been kicked out of a restaurant for enjoying ourselves.
When the weather is perfect (sunny days not yet hot; a cooling breeze along the canals) and one has time, and a romantic imagination, Venice will seduce you.
In our case this is our third or fourth visit, and we are working – school each morning, and some homework to fit in each afternoon. We have noticed detritus floating in the canals, beggars on many bridges, gratuitous musicians, loud bars, graffiti on sacred walls and ordinary houses. It is not as magical as it might be.
Yet there is some magic. We are in a lovely apartment, with sounds of life all around us. Laundry stays outside until ten at night, and early in the morning baskets are let down on strings from high windows for others to fill with bread and milk. Recycling is efficient and frequent, the locals are not unanimously sour, and life goes on as Venice actually were Italy. It is not, but it’s located right next to it.
We stumbled into an extraordinary event on Tuesday, the second of two days of a strike that closed Opera La Fenice. We had tickets to Don Giovanni and because of the strike we went to the box office to obtain a refund. This kind of thing can be a horror in Italy – however, it went smoothly, surprise, surprise. On the square in front of La Fenice musicians were putting on an impromptu concert. An older gentleman appeared on the Opera steps to beckon everyone – this was several hundred people – inside. “Venga, Venga... siamo aperto oggi...” and sure enough what ordinarily requires an expensive tour ticket or an expensive opera ticket suddenly was free as air.
People poured into the Sala Grande and everywhere were craning their necks in astonishment at the beautifully restored gilded plaster work, the ceiling clock, the huge chandeliers, the uncountable rows of stacked box seats, the stage itself with the silver phoenix above it all... and the flashes went off in every direction. As the day wore on the ushers gave up trying to enforce their strict no camera rule. Eventually cameras were tolerated. Some flashers were chastised, others not.
The musicians, technicians and administration staff created an amazing day for themselves and everyone else, in protest to the strike (a minor guild had decided to strike) and to a forthcoming law that in effect will drastically cut funds for performing arts in Italy.
There were concerts for five solid hours: a wind quintet, bassoon quartet, a choir concert, brass ensemble, opera excerpts, string quartet, string quartet with clarinet, baroque music, and a final jazz concert in the early evening.
All free, all delivered by musicians in tennis shoes, Levis and t-shirts, playing music of the first quality, more or less without rehearsal. Wow.
In the Sala Apollinee we heard the entire opera chorus, fifty strong, singing from the surrounding balcony, angels on high. In front of us the Maestro conducting his singers far above, pointing now at the sopranos to his left, now the basses on the right, and two pianists playing opera excerpts four-hands. Again, wow.
We fell like idiots into a crazy moment that cannot be repeated. We had to leave after the string quartet played movements from Mozart’s “Dissonant” in C major; the Dvorak “American” and part of the Mozart clarinet quintet.
The protesters have a web site: http://www.firmiamo.it/decreto-legge-riforma-enti-lirici-d-italia-del-ministro-sandr/ and if the hyphens should be underlines, or I’ve mistyped, try googling them: “protest at La Fenice” should do it...
From their flyer: “... a protest against a new law, the Decreto Fondazioni Lirico-Sinfoniche... approved in the first week of May.
“The law, without any form of discussion with representatives of the sector... intends... to reform the structure of all theaters in Italy.... in a few years, and for certain orchestras in a few months, there will be no possibility of covering the costs for concerts and opera productions while keeping the artistic quality intact... this law... doesn’t reflect the need of reforms... instead it constitutes a dangerous attack to (sic) one of the main Italian cultural traditions.”
If you’d like to express your personal opinion on all this, send an email to MIBAC (www.beniculturali.it) and leave a message in the contact form.
MIBAC = Ministero dei Beni Culturali = Ministry of Cultural Benefits
It’s now 7:30. Joselyn is almost finished with her homework (verbi irregolari) and we’re about to walk down the street? fondamento? calle? rio? to a nearby restaurant we discovered yesterday. Few know about this place. Let’s keep it a secret between us and the Sunday Times, the NY Times, Rick Steves and the lonely ones at Lonely Planet, the fuddy ones at Fodors, the go go go ones at Let’s Go, the spaced out ones at TimeOut, and those inquisitive tour guides.
Do you have room for a hundred? Great! See you at seven.
15 May 2010
Dear Diary: The News from Denmark
Dear Diary,
In dreary, rainy Copenhagen we have an ultra-modern hotel room with the latest in Danish design. It’s very cozy. When you plug in the telephone it boots like a computer. When you take a shower the slight glass door over the bathtub is too short to keep your shower from hitting the black tiled floor. We are not complaining, just suggesting.
For me, the 12 day Natl Geo/Lindblad tour of the outlying British Isles had it’s moments... we went to places we’d never otherwise be able to visit. I did get tired of the non-stop chatter of guides and the tight daily schedule. Met a couple of interesting souls, saw a LOT of sheep, and old stones. Took lots of pictures. Talked to a NGeo pro photographer. The cabin shower did not leak, as I remember.
Later, on Aero Island with cousin Inky (Phd) and Finn (double Phd), had a relaxing day and half with the ducks, the fairytale houses and the occasional smoked eel. Bath down the hall, and the shower did not leak, but there was no shelf for soap or shampoo or conditioner or body gel or Dr Bronner’s Godlike Soap or a face towel or face wash or razor or shaving stuff or soap.
We discussed family issues over good local Aero India Pale Ale. Finn responded to my questions about the ontological proof for the existence of God, noting that being than which nothing greater can be conceived (cough) and that existence is not a predicate. We talked like that for more than an hour, then he hit me in the jaw, which was a good thing, and we drank more Aero Pale Ale.
At the Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen’s 20 acre downtown back yard, if a back yard can have a dozen bars and cafes, lakes, a pirate ship, ducks, a copy of the Little Mermaid, a roller coaster (scream!) a rotating WWI fighter plane on huge circling poles that resemble the Danish windmills, a mock rock band on a blue-smoke smoking stage, a small orchestra, horse races won by our cousin Inky because she got more balls in the 3-hole faster than the other jockeys, and much, much more. Chocolate, popcorn, herring on a stick, what-the? We had dinner at the most traditional of the Tivoli eateries. Groften. Out in the smoking garden tables was the Mayor of Copenhagen. At another table, a white-haired skinny talk-show host who looked remarkably like me, if I spoke Danish and had a history of short-term marriages to stunning Danish delights, which, apparently, he has.
The food was mixture of old (all the veal-infused mashed potatoes you can eat, plus endless helpings of pickled beets) and new (green salad, baked egg plant, grilled chicken on pasta). And beer. Don’t forget the beer.
All beer in Denmark is made by Carlsberg, even if the bottle says Tuborg or anything else except Aero Ale. Artisan breweries are popping up, but in the years after WWII Carlsberg bought and shut down all the other breweries in Denmark, retaining a few famous labels such as the prior main competitor Tuborg. The story goes that one day about a million bottles of Carlsberg were accidently filled with Tuborg beer, AND NO ONE NOTICED ANY DIFFERENCE.
Now we venture into the rain for a shopping spree (batteries, toothpaste, lens cap, contact lens solution and more) and another dinner, this one in a typical Danish restaurant that features vegetarian fare (lots of vegetables!) and steak. Something for everyone. From their web site: “We hope you will find delight in our new, more fat and poor vitamin rich buffet.”
That’s all for now. Sunday: Venice and language school, and rain.
In dreary, rainy Copenhagen we have an ultra-modern hotel room with the latest in Danish design. It’s very cozy. When you plug in the telephone it boots like a computer. When you take a shower the slight glass door over the bathtub is too short to keep your shower from hitting the black tiled floor. We are not complaining, just suggesting.
For me, the 12 day Natl Geo/Lindblad tour of the outlying British Isles had it’s moments... we went to places we’d never otherwise be able to visit. I did get tired of the non-stop chatter of guides and the tight daily schedule. Met a couple of interesting souls, saw a LOT of sheep, and old stones. Took lots of pictures. Talked to a NGeo pro photographer. The cabin shower did not leak, as I remember.
Later, on Aero Island with cousin Inky (Phd) and Finn (double Phd), had a relaxing day and half with the ducks, the fairytale houses and the occasional smoked eel. Bath down the hall, and the shower did not leak, but there was no shelf for soap or shampoo or conditioner or body gel or Dr Bronner’s Godlike Soap or a face towel or face wash or razor or shaving stuff or soap.
We discussed family issues over good local Aero India Pale Ale. Finn responded to my questions about the ontological proof for the existence of God, noting that being than which nothing greater can be conceived (cough) and that existence is not a predicate. We talked like that for more than an hour, then he hit me in the jaw, which was a good thing, and we drank more Aero Pale Ale.
At the Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen’s 20 acre downtown back yard, if a back yard can have a dozen bars and cafes, lakes, a pirate ship, ducks, a copy of the Little Mermaid, a roller coaster (scream!) a rotating WWI fighter plane on huge circling poles that resemble the Danish windmills, a mock rock band on a blue-smoke smoking stage, a small orchestra, horse races won by our cousin Inky because she got more balls in the 3-hole faster than the other jockeys, and much, much more. Chocolate, popcorn, herring on a stick, what-the? We had dinner at the most traditional of the Tivoli eateries. Groften. Out in the smoking garden tables was the Mayor of Copenhagen. At another table, a white-haired skinny talk-show host who looked remarkably like me, if I spoke Danish and had a history of short-term marriages to stunning Danish delights, which, apparently, he has.
The food was mixture of old (all the veal-infused mashed potatoes you can eat, plus endless helpings of pickled beets) and new (green salad, baked egg plant, grilled chicken on pasta). And beer. Don’t forget the beer.
All beer in Denmark is made by Carlsberg, even if the bottle says Tuborg or anything else except Aero Ale. Artisan breweries are popping up, but in the years after WWII Carlsberg bought and shut down all the other breweries in Denmark, retaining a few famous labels such as the prior main competitor Tuborg. The story goes that one day about a million bottles of Carlsberg were accidently filled with Tuborg beer, AND NO ONE NOTICED ANY DIFFERENCE.
Now we venture into the rain for a shopping spree (batteries, toothpaste, lens cap, contact lens solution and more) and another dinner, this one in a typical Danish restaurant that features vegetarian fare (lots of vegetables!) and steak. Something for everyone. From their web site: “We hope you will find delight in our new, more fat and poor vitamin rich buffet.”
That’s all for now. Sunday: Venice and language school, and rain.
29 April 2010
London to Norway to Denmark to Italy to London, April/May 2010
The view from our hotel window, day; and night...
"There's a tea tasting. I would love to go to a tea tasting" calls Joselyn from her luxurious bath tub where she is scubbing off the jet lag... We are finishing our one day in London just now... enjoying that strange sense of dislocation.... We are staying at the Millennium Knightsbridge on Sloane St, near Harrods and Have A Nickel's... sleeping and trying to adjust to the new time zone. Our first stop outside this morning was to have coffees at Cafe Nero, an "Italian" coffee shop with no Italians in it. However, tonight we plan to have dinner a one minute walk from this hotel, at Sale e Pepe, a small Italian restaurant where they greet you in Italian.
"There's a tea tasting. I would love to go to a tea tasting" calls Joselyn from her luxurious bath tub where she is scubbing off the jet lag... We are finishing our one day in London just now... enjoying that strange sense of dislocation.... We are staying at the Millennium Knightsbridge on Sloane St, near Harrods and Have A Nickel's... sleeping and trying to adjust to the new time zone. Our first stop outside this morning was to have coffees at Cafe Nero, an "Italian" coffee shop with no Italians in it. However, tonight we plan to have dinner a one minute walk from this hotel, at Sale e Pepe, a small Italian restaurant where they greet you in Italian.
I will speak Italian one way or another.
I will say: "Abbiamo un prenotazione... mia moglie e' una vegetariana..."
They will hear: "I dunno... I think he said he has a premonition that the milk is spoiled, or made out of vegetables.
"You take care of them. I can't understand a word they say."
On the way over from San Francisco we were given seats in the middle of a five, and if you've flown you know what that means. We objected, pointing out the J has to go the lav a lot, and were moved, no charge because the clerk was in a good mood at the baggage check, to economy plus (exactly four more inches of leg room), saving us $200. Then we asked again, later, and because the plane was only 3/4 full, were moved to a 2 bulkhead seat with LOTS of room. By pressing our feet against the bulkhead we could (a) summon help (b) stick a leg out the window or (c) relieve our cramps.
Did you know there is an Italian bookstore in London? It's called The Italian Bookshop. 5 Cecil Court, closest tube station is Leicester Square tube Station. Charing Cross is close as well. Opening time 10:30-6:30pm. Near to Foyle's, Waterstone's, and 100 small antiquarian book shops.
Tomorrow we give ourselves over to the good hands of Natl Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions. We meet in the lobby here, then proceed to Winchester, then Exeter, to Totnes, a ferry down the Dart to Dartmouth, overnight in Exeter, then finally join our ship there (it was delayed a day in a drydock in Spain to fix a leaking seal).... I know there's a joke in there, but I'm too spaced to find it. The ship will take us around the outside of the British Isles -- Scilly isles, Skelligs, Dingle Peninsula, Aran islands and cliffs of Moher, county Donegal, Iona and Staffa, St Klida and Callanish (Hebrides), Inverewe Gardens, Orkney islands, Fair Isle and Mousa, and the Shetlands.... whew... all this in about two weeks.
Hope this log wasn't too boring. See you all soon, one way or the other.
22 April 2010
Under the Volcano, and Over It, and Around It
That darn volcano in Iceland (this week renamed Warmland) disrupted a lot of things and a lot of people. Last weekend the London Book Fair proceeded with virtually no participants from North America.
The London Book Fair traditionally ends midweek, a day one correspondent tagged Volcanic Ash Wednesday. He reported the fair was quieter than usual, with many fewer Americans about. Some European publishers who ordinarily would not show up at the USA version of the event, BookExpo America, are now booking hard-to-obtain transatlantic seats in hopes of meeting the missing Americans in New York city next month.
We kept our noses in the news every day this month, because long ago we had picked this particular week to fly to London. When and if our plane does touch down at Heathrow we shall cheer and applaud, watching through portholes as our plane skids through volcanic debris. I’ve heard that most of the English now are permanently covered in Icelandic volcano dust. Anti-influenza masks are in fashion, and lemon-scented tea is served with a light covering of ash on each dainty cup.
We’ve packed extra lungs in our suitcases, so we should be OK, unless KwaklbakleLackle (or whatever the volcano is called in Warmlandic) should exhale again, or perhaps its sister exhale 12 miles away. Health care is free in Britain, so unless there’s a queue we expect to have substitute lungs installed as needed.
The question was raised today on local radio: Is Mother Earth angry with us? She’s busy, everywhere exploding, earthquaking, global warming, ocean rising, glacier melting. We dig her fossils for fuel (and she sets fire to oil rigs in Louisiana, blows up mines in China and Appalachia) and we drain her aquifers faster than she can refill. What did I leave out? Oh yes, we fight wars in her deserts and clearcut her forests. No wonder Mother is annoyed, especially today, the 40th Annual Earth Day.
Earth Day. Now there’s a concept. What are the rest of the days – Not Earth Days? Sky Day? Earth & Sky Day? No wait, that name’s taken by an annoying radio program. Of course every day should be Earth Day, just as every day should be Christmas, New Year’s and the Fourth of July. It’s not yet possible, but we’re working on this. You can fan us on Facebook.
In addition to lungs and masks, we’re packing Britishisms as well, to get ready for the lift, the lorry and the courgette, whatever that is and please don’t enlighten me.
Things that are singular over here, such as teams or companies, are plural over there. My sweater becomes a jersey; trousers are kecks, shoes are gutties or plimsolls or wellies. A fight is a row, scrumpy is cider. To swot is to study and if one is anti-social in a pretentious way, prepare for the oft-tossed epithet “toffee-nosed.”
Some of these Brit terms are simply cute. The postman is a postie. A wanker you don’t want to know. A wart, on the foot, is a verruca. If you develop a wart on the tip of your nose, it’s still a verruca.
And as for food, there’s toad-in-the-hole, don’t ask, and clingfilm for your takeaway.
I’d love to get into the much larger selection of dirty words and insults, older terms such as blockish grutnol and grouthead gnat-snapper, but bollocks, we’re out of time. Now don’t get all argy-bargy on me. Back in June.
NOTES:
Some of the terms quoted here came from “Blooming English, Observations on the Roots, Cultivation and Hybrids of the English Language” by Australian linguist Kate Burridge. Published in 2004 by Cambridge University Press paperback $26.99. ISBN 0521548322.
Burridge’s follow-up book:
“Weeds in the Garden of Words: Further Observations on the Tangled History of the English Language” by Kate Burridge. Cambridge University Press paperback $24.99. ISBN 0521618231.
Burridge plays the hurdy-gurdy with the medieval music group, Carnevale and does readings of Old English. She currently is professor of linguistics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Short biography here where it also is possible to view her “Wise Words” segments on the Australian TV show “Can We Help?”
The London Book Fair traditionally ends midweek, a day one correspondent tagged Volcanic Ash Wednesday. He reported the fair was quieter than usual, with many fewer Americans about. Some European publishers who ordinarily would not show up at the USA version of the event, BookExpo America, are now booking hard-to-obtain transatlantic seats in hopes of meeting the missing Americans in New York city next month.
We kept our noses in the news every day this month, because long ago we had picked this particular week to fly to London. When and if our plane does touch down at Heathrow we shall cheer and applaud, watching through portholes as our plane skids through volcanic debris. I’ve heard that most of the English now are permanently covered in Icelandic volcano dust. Anti-influenza masks are in fashion, and lemon-scented tea is served with a light covering of ash on each dainty cup.
We’ve packed extra lungs in our suitcases, so we should be OK, unless KwaklbakleLackle (or whatever the volcano is called in Warmlandic) should exhale again, or perhaps its sister exhale 12 miles away. Health care is free in Britain, so unless there’s a queue we expect to have substitute lungs installed as needed.
The question was raised today on local radio: Is Mother Earth angry with us? She’s busy, everywhere exploding, earthquaking, global warming, ocean rising, glacier melting. We dig her fossils for fuel (and she sets fire to oil rigs in Louisiana, blows up mines in China and Appalachia) and we drain her aquifers faster than she can refill. What did I leave out? Oh yes, we fight wars in her deserts and clearcut her forests. No wonder Mother is annoyed, especially today, the 40th Annual Earth Day.
Earth Day. Now there’s a concept. What are the rest of the days – Not Earth Days? Sky Day? Earth & Sky Day? No wait, that name’s taken by an annoying radio program. Of course every day should be Earth Day, just as every day should be Christmas, New Year’s and the Fourth of July. It’s not yet possible, but we’re working on this. You can fan us on Facebook.
In addition to lungs and masks, we’re packing Britishisms as well, to get ready for the lift, the lorry and the courgette, whatever that is and please don’t enlighten me.
Things that are singular over here, such as teams or companies, are plural over there. My sweater becomes a jersey; trousers are kecks, shoes are gutties or plimsolls or wellies. A fight is a row, scrumpy is cider. To swot is to study and if one is anti-social in a pretentious way, prepare for the oft-tossed epithet “toffee-nosed.”
Some of these Brit terms are simply cute. The postman is a postie. A wanker you don’t want to know. A wart, on the foot, is a verruca. If you develop a wart on the tip of your nose, it’s still a verruca.
And as for food, there’s toad-in-the-hole, don’t ask, and clingfilm for your takeaway.
I’d love to get into the much larger selection of dirty words and insults, older terms such as blockish grutnol and grouthead gnat-snapper, but bollocks, we’re out of time. Now don’t get all argy-bargy on me. Back in June.
NOTES:
Some of the terms quoted here came from “Blooming English, Observations on the Roots, Cultivation and Hybrids of the English Language” by Australian linguist Kate Burridge. Published in 2004 by Cambridge University Press paperback $26.99. ISBN 0521548322.
Burridge’s follow-up book:
“Weeds in the Garden of Words: Further Observations on the Tangled History of the English Language” by Kate Burridge. Cambridge University Press paperback $24.99. ISBN 0521618231.
Burridge plays the hurdy-gurdy with the medieval music group, Carnevale and does readings of Old English. She currently is professor of linguistics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Short biography here where it also is possible to view her “Wise Words” segments on the Australian TV show “Can We Help?”
18 April 2010
Professors and prostitutes...
I am reading “Blooming English” published by Cambridge University Press in 2004, subtitled “Observations on the roots, cultivation and hybrids of the English Language.” Pondering this densely rich, entertaining book while studying Italian makes me half-crazy (the other half, of course, remains absolutely sane).
Australian linguist Kate Burridge exposes the hidden under the obvious – we know that children miss-hear things, but why do they do it? Why are there no “white spaces” between words we speak as there are between words we write (and how do we figure out what those spoken words mean)?
Take all of this interesting complexity (and I’m only referring to the first 27 pages of this book) and relate it to another language... say, Italian. Then the truly perplexing questions arise.
For example... English uses expressive infixing to intensify some words, and there are rules about this. “Fanfuckingtastic” is a common intensification of “fantastic.” You don’t infix words of fewer than three syllables. The infixes themselves have to have more than one syllable.
So... are there expressive infixes in Italian?
What is the longest word in Italian? Is there an equivalent to floccinaucinihilipilificationalization?
Do Italians use certain endings (or beginnings) to create new words? Is there “hearism” and “tasteism” and “Gatorade” and “limeade” and other ades? Pcdom, fandom, moviedom, parentdom? Do Italians diarize, prioritize, burglarize? Acutalize? Prayerize? Picturize?
Do Italians play Scrabble? And if so, are there problems when someone lays down “typer” instead of “typist”? Is there an Italian equivalent to “er” as in comer, studier, presider, cycler, supposer, stealer, groaner (one who groans; and a dialect term for a whistling buoy; and a joke that makes one groan in agony)?
All of these observations on English do or do not have their equivalents in Italian, and I’d like to know more about this. Help!
Do Italians have favorite words, words that please them; and the opposite, words they dislike intensely? English speakers like “serendipity” and dislike “toothbrush.”
Howabout nonce words: words that are created and forgotten pretty much on the spot. Examples in English: “foreploy” (any misrepresentation or outright lie about yourself that leads to sex) and “bagonize” (to wait at the luggage carousel for a suitcase that takes its time appearing when you are in a hurry). In Italian?
Mondegreens – oronyms – misheard words and phrases – are common in English. “Gladly the cross-eyed bear” for “Gladly the cross I bear” and disarranged phrases, as the famous one “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” for “eats shoots and leaves”... “I scream” instead of “ice cream;” “The stuffy nose can lead to problems” for “the stuff he knows can lead to problems.”
Or playful mistakes such as “Be Alert – We need more lerts!”
Do things like these exist in Italian?
And Pig Latin? After all, Latin began in Italy long before there was an Italy.
Does Italian have the equivalent of an exaltation of larks, a conjugation of linguists, a shelf of librarians, a gaggle of geese?
Four Oxford dons see a group of prostitutes. “A jam of tarts!” A flourish of strumpets!” An essay of Trollope’s” and “An anthology of prose!”
Four Italian professors from Padua see the same group of prostitutes. What do they mutter?
Australian linguist Kate Burridge exposes the hidden under the obvious – we know that children miss-hear things, but why do they do it? Why are there no “white spaces” between words we speak as there are between words we write (and how do we figure out what those spoken words mean)?
Take all of this interesting complexity (and I’m only referring to the first 27 pages of this book) and relate it to another language... say, Italian. Then the truly perplexing questions arise.
For example... English uses expressive infixing to intensify some words, and there are rules about this. “Fanfuckingtastic” is a common intensification of “fantastic.” You don’t infix words of fewer than three syllables. The infixes themselves have to have more than one syllable.
So... are there expressive infixes in Italian?
What is the longest word in Italian? Is there an equivalent to floccinaucinihilipilificationalization?
Do Italians use certain endings (or beginnings) to create new words? Is there “hearism” and “tasteism” and “Gatorade” and “limeade” and other ades? Pcdom, fandom, moviedom, parentdom? Do Italians diarize, prioritize, burglarize? Acutalize? Prayerize? Picturize?
Do Italians play Scrabble? And if so, are there problems when someone lays down “typer” instead of “typist”? Is there an Italian equivalent to “er” as in comer, studier, presider, cycler, supposer, stealer, groaner (one who groans; and a dialect term for a whistling buoy; and a joke that makes one groan in agony)?
All of these observations on English do or do not have their equivalents in Italian, and I’d like to know more about this. Help!
Do Italians have favorite words, words that please them; and the opposite, words they dislike intensely? English speakers like “serendipity” and dislike “toothbrush.”
Howabout nonce words: words that are created and forgotten pretty much on the spot. Examples in English: “foreploy” (any misrepresentation or outright lie about yourself that leads to sex) and “bagonize” (to wait at the luggage carousel for a suitcase that takes its time appearing when you are in a hurry). In Italian?
Mondegreens – oronyms – misheard words and phrases – are common in English. “Gladly the cross-eyed bear” for “Gladly the cross I bear” and disarranged phrases, as the famous one “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” for “eats shoots and leaves”... “I scream” instead of “ice cream;” “The stuffy nose can lead to problems” for “the stuff he knows can lead to problems.”
Or playful mistakes such as “Be Alert – We need more lerts!”
Do things like these exist in Italian?
And Pig Latin? After all, Latin began in Italy long before there was an Italy.
Does Italian have the equivalent of an exaltation of larks, a conjugation of linguists, a shelf of librarians, a gaggle of geese?
Four Oxford dons see a group of prostitutes. “A jam of tarts!” A flourish of strumpets!” An essay of Trollope’s” and “An anthology of prose!”
Four Italian professors from Padua see the same group of prostitutes. What do they mutter?
15 April 2010
Matterhorn
The Vietnam War, or the American War as the North Vietnamese would have it, officially ended the morning of April 30, 1975, as a final helicopter lifted out the last ten marines from the American Embassy in Saigon.
In the novel “Matterhorn” historical time and historical dates don’t matter much to author Karl Marlantes. What matters is the jungle, the fog, the enemy. Bullets, bombs, staying safe or getting killed.
“Matterhorn” is a fantasy – these events didn’t happen, but similar ones certainly did. Some General decided to name high jungle peaks after Swiss Alps. This story revolves around a hillock designated Matterhorn, in the mountainous jungles, a very long way from here.
The sense of danger and dread is unrelenting. Marlantes provides very few moments for the reader to stop and wonder. The book is a nonstop tale written in mud and blood by an author who lived through it. I read this book late into the night four or five days in a row.
One reader commented online, “When they ask, fifty years from now, what was the Vietnam War like? Someone will hand them ‘Matterhorn.’ There it is.”
The way I’ve heard this novel described to those who haven’t yet read it is simple – you will feel you are in the jungle, with the Marines, from the very first page.
The book stands out crisply from other war books for that reason alone. It doesn’t get all gung-ho war movie or sadly sentimental or all Norman Mailer and the Great American Novel on you. There is a satisfying minimum of foxhole philosophy, no halfway authentic battles.
“Goodwin sauntered up to the CP group. He was eating a can of spaghetti and meatballs mixed with a package of Wyler’s lemonade powder. ‘What’s up, Jack?’ he asked Fitch.
“‘We’re going to take the hill at first light.’
“‘Matterhorn?’”
“‘No. Helicopter hill.’
Goodwin whistled. ‘Just like in the movies,’ he said.
“‘Let’s hope so, Fitch replied, spreading his map.”
And this: “Something ahead snapped, and Mellas’ heartbeat accelerated as the shadow of Vancouver sank quickly to the mud. Mellas went down on one knee, eyes straining. The wind moved softly through the jungle, bringing the smell of damp rot. It also rustled the trees, filling the air with a steady hiss. Trying to hear anything was maddening. The failure to hear could mean his death. The fear made his heart pound and his breathing shallow and more rapid, all in turn making it more difficult to hear. No one moved. Everyone was waiting for an order...”
According to the jacket flap, it took Karl Marlantes thirty-five years to write this novel. I would guess that no matter when he started it, he could not have let it go until many years after the war.
Too bad, because I found myself wishing I could have read this book back in the day, when some were fighting in the jungle and others back home, like myself, were fighting against the war. And struggling to keep ourselves out of it, to be honest.
I was one of many college students who by and large did not end up on a plane to Vietnam. We swapped stories about swallowing blood to simulate bleeding ulcers. We attended college, graduate school, whatever it took to stay out of the wartime draft.
Some patriotic suckers actually enlisted. Others went because they were poor, or black, or poor and black. All of us – fighters and protestors alike – knew little about the war. We thought we understood the politics, but we didn’t. We thought we knew the war, but we didn’t know about the mistakes that killed people, or the luck that saved them during the war and long after.
Back then we would not have wanted to read a book like this, but I wish we had it in our hands in those days.
You are not likely to come across a better told tale of this now almost mythical war, nor one more universal in its suffering and redemption. We are fortunate that Karl Marlantes survived the Marines, medals and all, and lived to write about it. This is a harrowing, important book.
NOTES:
“Matterhorn” by Karl Marlantes. Atlantic Monthly Press hard cover $24.95. ISBN 9780802119285.
The publisher Grove Atlantic has an interview with the author, and links to reviews.
The Lemuria Books blog reprints an essay by Karl Marlantes. He starts with this: “Having read a galley of my novel, Matterhorn, about Marines in Vietnam, a somewhat embarrassed woman came up to me and said, “I didn’t even know you guys slept outside.” She was college educated and had been an active protester against the war. I felt that my novel had built a small bridge.”
Karl Marlantes was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. You can read the Navy Cross presentation here.
In the novel “Matterhorn” historical time and historical dates don’t matter much to author Karl Marlantes. What matters is the jungle, the fog, the enemy. Bullets, bombs, staying safe or getting killed.
“Matterhorn” is a fantasy – these events didn’t happen, but similar ones certainly did. Some General decided to name high jungle peaks after Swiss Alps. This story revolves around a hillock designated Matterhorn, in the mountainous jungles, a very long way from here.
The sense of danger and dread is unrelenting. Marlantes provides very few moments for the reader to stop and wonder. The book is a nonstop tale written in mud and blood by an author who lived through it. I read this book late into the night four or five days in a row.
One reader commented online, “When they ask, fifty years from now, what was the Vietnam War like? Someone will hand them ‘Matterhorn.’ There it is.”
The way I’ve heard this novel described to those who haven’t yet read it is simple – you will feel you are in the jungle, with the Marines, from the very first page.
The book stands out crisply from other war books for that reason alone. It doesn’t get all gung-ho war movie or sadly sentimental or all Norman Mailer and the Great American Novel on you. There is a satisfying minimum of foxhole philosophy, no halfway authentic battles.
“Goodwin sauntered up to the CP group. He was eating a can of spaghetti and meatballs mixed with a package of Wyler’s lemonade powder. ‘What’s up, Jack?’ he asked Fitch.
“‘We’re going to take the hill at first light.’
“‘Matterhorn?’”
“‘No. Helicopter hill.’
Goodwin whistled. ‘Just like in the movies,’ he said.
“‘Let’s hope so, Fitch replied, spreading his map.”
And this: “Something ahead snapped, and Mellas’ heartbeat accelerated as the shadow of Vancouver sank quickly to the mud. Mellas went down on one knee, eyes straining. The wind moved softly through the jungle, bringing the smell of damp rot. It also rustled the trees, filling the air with a steady hiss. Trying to hear anything was maddening. The failure to hear could mean his death. The fear made his heart pound and his breathing shallow and more rapid, all in turn making it more difficult to hear. No one moved. Everyone was waiting for an order...”
According to the jacket flap, it took Karl Marlantes thirty-five years to write this novel. I would guess that no matter when he started it, he could not have let it go until many years after the war.
Too bad, because I found myself wishing I could have read this book back in the day, when some were fighting in the jungle and others back home, like myself, were fighting against the war. And struggling to keep ourselves out of it, to be honest.
I was one of many college students who by and large did not end up on a plane to Vietnam. We swapped stories about swallowing blood to simulate bleeding ulcers. We attended college, graduate school, whatever it took to stay out of the wartime draft.
Some patriotic suckers actually enlisted. Others went because they were poor, or black, or poor and black. All of us – fighters and protestors alike – knew little about the war. We thought we understood the politics, but we didn’t. We thought we knew the war, but we didn’t know about the mistakes that killed people, or the luck that saved them during the war and long after.
Back then we would not have wanted to read a book like this, but I wish we had it in our hands in those days.
You are not likely to come across a better told tale of this now almost mythical war, nor one more universal in its suffering and redemption. We are fortunate that Karl Marlantes survived the Marines, medals and all, and lived to write about it. This is a harrowing, important book.
NOTES:
“Matterhorn” by Karl Marlantes. Atlantic Monthly Press hard cover $24.95. ISBN 9780802119285.
The publisher Grove Atlantic has an interview with the author, and links to reviews.
The Lemuria Books blog reprints an essay by Karl Marlantes. He starts with this: “Having read a galley of my novel, Matterhorn, about Marines in Vietnam, a somewhat embarrassed woman came up to me and said, “I didn’t even know you guys slept outside.” She was college educated and had been an active protester against the war. I felt that my novel had built a small bridge.”
Karl Marlantes was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. You can read the Navy Cross presentation here.
09 April 2010
Getting All Thoughty on You
We watch TV, I admit it, and we watch the CBS news, I admit that, and we have noticed that news makers brought in to the studio for interviews are sat in front of the same fake books on fake bookshelves.
The books themselves never move or change. (Come to think of it, neither do most of my own books.) The CBS books glow softly in shades of violet, green, gold and red. They set off the sallow skin or disappearing hair of the guests quite effectively.
We may be the only viewers in the country who have noticed this. Does anyone else still watch network news every night of the week? Hey... we watch it on our Digital Video Recorder – no commercials. The half hour show is over in 20 minutes.
What backdrop will CBS use in future years? Some say books made of paper (remember paper?) now inhabit an historical realm strewn with buggy whips and ox carts, bronze swords, typewriters and telegraph keys. Soon enough, CBS will display rows of Kindles lined up in black and white, or pods of IPads showing off in full color; Nooks, Pocket Pros, a queue of Ques...
John Updike wrote in his sixth collection of essays, “Due Considerations,” “Books externalize our brains, and turn our homes into thinking bodies...
“My mother's college texts, I remember, sat untouched in a corner of our country bookcase, radiating the glories of Renaissance poetry and Greek drama while being slowly hollowed by silverfish. The bulk of my own college books are still with me, rarely consulted but always there... Such books... form an infinite resource of potential rereading, of new angles and insights on terrain where our footprints have all but vanished.”
From my parents I inherited many cartons of books. I kept the most unusual or interesting ones, judging them mostly by their covers. I have half a shelf in cracked red leather, other books in navy blue boards with gilt letters on their spines. From my father a collection of theater magazines from the 1930s. From my mother paperback volumes from The Britannica Home University, faded yellow stapled paperbacks dating from the 1920s.
On page four there is an Underwood & Underwood photo of a lawn tennis doubles match at Wimbledon, the players in white shirts and pants, audience in straw hats. On page 54, a photo depicts “A Quiet Game of Draughts” between two elderly, bearded gentlemen with the caption, “Edgar Allen Poe used to argue that checkers was an even more intellectual game than chess.”
I did not know that.
Updike writes, “Books hold our beams down; they act as counterweight to our fickle and flighty natures. In comparison, any electronic text-delivery device lacks substance. Further, speaking of obsolescence, it would be outdated in a year and within 15 as inoperable as my formerly cutting-edge Wang word-processor from the mid-Eighties... Without books, we might melt into the airwaves, and be just another set of blips.”
Updike wrote before the birth of Kindle and variously named I-Things. But like the poet William Butler Yeats he had a sure sense for the Second Coming:
“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed... and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...” William Butler Yeats, 1919
Holding on to my own collection of physical books feels more and more like a rear-guard action, protecting civilized old things from the onslaught of the relentlessly new.
“The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...”
It reassures me to play three hundred year-old music on a wooden instrument invented in the 17th century. My particular cello was carved, shaped and fitted together in Italy during the toughest years of World War II. It’s a fine old thing, a mere baby at 70 years of age. These days there are fiberglass cellos available and purely electronic ones. Yet wood-and-glue versions have never been bettered. This gives me hope and comfort and a fair amount of joy.
My paper books and my wooden cello carry me across any chasm. I like to imagine ink-on-paper books and wooden instruments will continue forever, while at the same time, I hope and expect that books in electronic form and musical instruments made of ever more exotic materials will flourish alongside.
NOTES:
Updike’s essay is published in “Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism” by John Updike. Ballantine Books paperback $20. ISBN 034549900X.
From the publisher: “‘A drop of truth, of lived experience, glistens in each.’ This is how (the late) John Updike, one of the world's most acclaimed novelists, modestly described his nonfiction work, the brilliant and graceful essays and criticism he has written for more than five decades. ‘Due Considerations’ is his sixth collection, and perhaps the most moving, stylish, and personal...”
Quotations from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). It is one of the most frequently anthologized poems.
The books themselves never move or change. (Come to think of it, neither do most of my own books.) The CBS books glow softly in shades of violet, green, gold and red. They set off the sallow skin or disappearing hair of the guests quite effectively.
We may be the only viewers in the country who have noticed this. Does anyone else still watch network news every night of the week? Hey... we watch it on our Digital Video Recorder – no commercials. The half hour show is over in 20 minutes.
What backdrop will CBS use in future years? Some say books made of paper (remember paper?) now inhabit an historical realm strewn with buggy whips and ox carts, bronze swords, typewriters and telegraph keys. Soon enough, CBS will display rows of Kindles lined up in black and white, or pods of IPads showing off in full color; Nooks, Pocket Pros, a queue of Ques...
John Updike wrote in his sixth collection of essays, “Due Considerations,” “Books externalize our brains, and turn our homes into thinking bodies...
“My mother's college texts, I remember, sat untouched in a corner of our country bookcase, radiating the glories of Renaissance poetry and Greek drama while being slowly hollowed by silverfish. The bulk of my own college books are still with me, rarely consulted but always there... Such books... form an infinite resource of potential rereading, of new angles and insights on terrain where our footprints have all but vanished.”
From my parents I inherited many cartons of books. I kept the most unusual or interesting ones, judging them mostly by their covers. I have half a shelf in cracked red leather, other books in navy blue boards with gilt letters on their spines. From my father a collection of theater magazines from the 1930s. From my mother paperback volumes from The Britannica Home University, faded yellow stapled paperbacks dating from the 1920s.
On page four there is an Underwood & Underwood photo of a lawn tennis doubles match at Wimbledon, the players in white shirts and pants, audience in straw hats. On page 54, a photo depicts “A Quiet Game of Draughts” between two elderly, bearded gentlemen with the caption, “Edgar Allen Poe used to argue that checkers was an even more intellectual game than chess.”
I did not know that.
Updike writes, “Books hold our beams down; they act as counterweight to our fickle and flighty natures. In comparison, any electronic text-delivery device lacks substance. Further, speaking of obsolescence, it would be outdated in a year and within 15 as inoperable as my formerly cutting-edge Wang word-processor from the mid-Eighties... Without books, we might melt into the airwaves, and be just another set of blips.”
Updike wrote before the birth of Kindle and variously named I-Things. But like the poet William Butler Yeats he had a sure sense for the Second Coming:
“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed... and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...” William Butler Yeats, 1919
Holding on to my own collection of physical books feels more and more like a rear-guard action, protecting civilized old things from the onslaught of the relentlessly new.
“The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...”
It reassures me to play three hundred year-old music on a wooden instrument invented in the 17th century. My particular cello was carved, shaped and fitted together in Italy during the toughest years of World War II. It’s a fine old thing, a mere baby at 70 years of age. These days there are fiberglass cellos available and purely electronic ones. Yet wood-and-glue versions have never been bettered. This gives me hope and comfort and a fair amount of joy.
My paper books and my wooden cello carry me across any chasm. I like to imagine ink-on-paper books and wooden instruments will continue forever, while at the same time, I hope and expect that books in electronic form and musical instruments made of ever more exotic materials will flourish alongside.
NOTES:
Updike’s essay is published in “Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism” by John Updike. Ballantine Books paperback $20. ISBN 034549900X.
From the publisher: “‘A drop of truth, of lived experience, glistens in each.’ This is how (the late) John Updike, one of the world's most acclaimed novelists, modestly described his nonfiction work, the brilliant and graceful essays and criticism he has written for more than five decades. ‘Due Considerations’ is his sixth collection, and perhaps the most moving, stylish, and personal...”
Quotations from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). It is one of the most frequently anthologized poems.
01 April 2010
A Romance on Three Legs
You fiction readers, with your emotional epiphanies and family sagas and all. I prefer mostly non-fiction, and I still get quite a lot of feeling out of my favorite books, especially the one I read this week: “A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano” by Katie Hafner.
I shed a tear on page 222 when Gould died of a stroke at age 50. I felt for him when he couldn’t find a Steinway anywhere to suit his particular pianistic needs, and ached with him when the one piano he really did like was broken to pieces on a loading dock. I rooted for his blind piano tuner, who rose from poverty to the heights of that somewhat esoteric profession.
What I’m trying to say is “A Romance on Three Legs” is not only well researched on a topic of great interest, but it’s as well written as any book I’ve read in a long time, fiction or non. It’s simply a glorious work of craft, start to finish.
“A Romance on Three Legs” was Gould’s own term for his love affair with his personal piano. The book concerns Glenn Gould’s search over many years for a piano that somehow could deliver the music he heard in his imagination.
He needed a piano with a delicate touch, not one set up for the bomb shell-like effects of composers such as Rachmaninoff or Liszt. “From an early age,” the author notes, “Gould adopted an unusual and intimately physical relationship with his instrument. Sometimes he lowered his face so close to the keyboard that it looked as if he was playing the piano with his nose. And it often seemed that he was hugging the instrument... Yet Gould’s ‘rather hunchbacked’ technique gave him ‘finger clarity, better definition and feeling’ for the composers he preferred, especially Bach.
Gould “sometimes said that he hummed while playing in order to compensate for the shortcomings of an unfamiliar or inferior piano... it represented wishful thinking, the perfect, ideal phrasing he had in his head that he could never quite achieve in real life.”
“Fans noticed,” Hafner writes. “A woman once sent a letter to Columbia Records from the Midwest to say she had just bought a recording of Bach’s French Suites. ‘Now, you’re not going to believe this, she wrote, ‘but someone is singing in the background as Mr. Gould is playing!’”
Gould also “stomped, swayed in time to the music, and conducted himself whenever he had a free hand. He sat sidesaddle much of the time, with one knee almost on the floor.” He invariably sat low to the keyboard, in an adjustable chair his father had modified for him. That same chair now sits in a museum in Gould’s native Toronto, along with his fabled Steinway CD 318, the piano he used for most of his career.
In 1946 at age 14 Glenn Gould performed with the Toronto Symphony. He quickly built a Canadian reputation, and became internationally acclaimed after New York concerts and the success of his first recording, the Goldberg Variations of Johann Sebastian Bach, released in 1956. This recording has been in print ever since, and it is one of the best-selling classical recordings of all time.
Gould gave up performing in public midway through his career, preferring the silence and concentration of a recording studio, where he would often edit and re-edit himself both on the piano and in the editing room. His recordings were technical masterpieces like no others.
Author Katie Hafner creates a deep and rich portrait of an unusual musical genius. She traces the full history of Steinway pianos, details the art of piano tuning and piano manufacture, and follows the stories of several people crucial to Gould’s life and career.
Along the way she tells every funny story, recounts every eccentricity, every dispute, love affair, grand achievement and petty annoyance. The author narrates the life of this most difficult artist with grace and honesty.
Truly this is a book to savor: “A Romance on Three Legs” by Bay Area writer Katie Hafner.
NOTES:
“A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano” by Katie Harper. Bloomsbury paperback $16. ISBN 1596915250.
Notes on the Gould’s Goldberg Variations from the book:
p. 25... “Gould’s recording of the Goldberg Variations became the best-selling classical recording of 1956. By 1960, it had sold forty thousand copies, which was, Joseph Roddy noted that year in the New Yorker, ‘just about as astonishing in the record business as a big run on a new edition of the Enneads of Plotinus would be in the book trade.’ Gould outsold the soundtrack for The Pajama Game... it would eventually become the best selling classical solo instrumental album of all time, with sales topping 1.8 million copies... “
P 223... Gould’s funeral (age 50, 1982).. “At the end of the service, the closing aria from the recent recording of the Goldberg Variations was piped into the cathedral (in Toronto)... His grave is marked by a simple granite stone into which the outline of a piano is etched, along with his name, years of birth and death, and the first three measures of the same aria.”
p. 20... “There were many reasons for Oppenheim’s objection (the producer for Columbia Records tried to talk him out of performing the Goldberg Variations). The Goldberg Variations was notoriously challenging; it was a work more often associated with the harpsichord than the piano; it had been recorded on piano by only two musicians, and one, Rosalyn Tureck, was the established authority. But Gould stood his ground and Columbia gave in.”
P. 22... “But in Gould’s agile hands the music became eye-opening, fresh, and brazen... When Gould played Bach, the music became sparse, abstract, and mysterious. (David) Dubal wrote, ‘It was a process that went far beyond quibbling about the correct instrument. Indeed, the timbre of the piano under Gould’s hands became new and unexpected.’”
p.22... “Gould... argued that the harpsichord purists were suffering from ‘musicological overkill’ and that Bach was comparatively indifferent on the question of which instrument a piece of music was best suited to When it came to Bach, he argued that in certain circumstances ‘the piano can get you a lot closer to Bach’s conceptual notions that the harpsichord ever can.’”
I shed a tear on page 222 when Gould died of a stroke at age 50. I felt for him when he couldn’t find a Steinway anywhere to suit his particular pianistic needs, and ached with him when the one piano he really did like was broken to pieces on a loading dock. I rooted for his blind piano tuner, who rose from poverty to the heights of that somewhat esoteric profession.
What I’m trying to say is “A Romance on Three Legs” is not only well researched on a topic of great interest, but it’s as well written as any book I’ve read in a long time, fiction or non. It’s simply a glorious work of craft, start to finish.
“A Romance on Three Legs” was Gould’s own term for his love affair with his personal piano. The book concerns Glenn Gould’s search over many years for a piano that somehow could deliver the music he heard in his imagination.
He needed a piano with a delicate touch, not one set up for the bomb shell-like effects of composers such as Rachmaninoff or Liszt. “From an early age,” the author notes, “Gould adopted an unusual and intimately physical relationship with his instrument. Sometimes he lowered his face so close to the keyboard that it looked as if he was playing the piano with his nose. And it often seemed that he was hugging the instrument... Yet Gould’s ‘rather hunchbacked’ technique gave him ‘finger clarity, better definition and feeling’ for the composers he preferred, especially Bach.
Gould “sometimes said that he hummed while playing in order to compensate for the shortcomings of an unfamiliar or inferior piano... it represented wishful thinking, the perfect, ideal phrasing he had in his head that he could never quite achieve in real life.”
“Fans noticed,” Hafner writes. “A woman once sent a letter to Columbia Records from the Midwest to say she had just bought a recording of Bach’s French Suites. ‘Now, you’re not going to believe this, she wrote, ‘but someone is singing in the background as Mr. Gould is playing!’”
Gould also “stomped, swayed in time to the music, and conducted himself whenever he had a free hand. He sat sidesaddle much of the time, with one knee almost on the floor.” He invariably sat low to the keyboard, in an adjustable chair his father had modified for him. That same chair now sits in a museum in Gould’s native Toronto, along with his fabled Steinway CD 318, the piano he used for most of his career.
In 1946 at age 14 Glenn Gould performed with the Toronto Symphony. He quickly built a Canadian reputation, and became internationally acclaimed after New York concerts and the success of his first recording, the Goldberg Variations of Johann Sebastian Bach, released in 1956. This recording has been in print ever since, and it is one of the best-selling classical recordings of all time.
Gould gave up performing in public midway through his career, preferring the silence and concentration of a recording studio, where he would often edit and re-edit himself both on the piano and in the editing room. His recordings were technical masterpieces like no others.
Author Katie Hafner creates a deep and rich portrait of an unusual musical genius. She traces the full history of Steinway pianos, details the art of piano tuning and piano manufacture, and follows the stories of several people crucial to Gould’s life and career.
Along the way she tells every funny story, recounts every eccentricity, every dispute, love affair, grand achievement and petty annoyance. The author narrates the life of this most difficult artist with grace and honesty.
Truly this is a book to savor: “A Romance on Three Legs” by Bay Area writer Katie Hafner.
NOTES:
“A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano” by Katie Harper. Bloomsbury paperback $16. ISBN 1596915250.
Notes on the Gould’s Goldberg Variations from the book:
p. 25... “Gould’s recording of the Goldberg Variations became the best-selling classical recording of 1956. By 1960, it had sold forty thousand copies, which was, Joseph Roddy noted that year in the New Yorker, ‘just about as astonishing in the record business as a big run on a new edition of the Enneads of Plotinus would be in the book trade.’ Gould outsold the soundtrack for The Pajama Game... it would eventually become the best selling classical solo instrumental album of all time, with sales topping 1.8 million copies... “
P 223... Gould’s funeral (age 50, 1982).. “At the end of the service, the closing aria from the recent recording of the Goldberg Variations was piped into the cathedral (in Toronto)... His grave is marked by a simple granite stone into which the outline of a piano is etched, along with his name, years of birth and death, and the first three measures of the same aria.”
p. 20... “There were many reasons for Oppenheim’s objection (the producer for Columbia Records tried to talk him out of performing the Goldberg Variations). The Goldberg Variations was notoriously challenging; it was a work more often associated with the harpsichord than the piano; it had been recorded on piano by only two musicians, and one, Rosalyn Tureck, was the established authority. But Gould stood his ground and Columbia gave in.”
P. 22... “But in Gould’s agile hands the music became eye-opening, fresh, and brazen... When Gould played Bach, the music became sparse, abstract, and mysterious. (David) Dubal wrote, ‘It was a process that went far beyond quibbling about the correct instrument. Indeed, the timbre of the piano under Gould’s hands became new and unexpected.’”
p.22... “Gould... argued that the harpsichord purists were suffering from ‘musicological overkill’ and that Bach was comparatively indifferent on the question of which instrument a piece of music was best suited to When it came to Bach, he argued that in certain circumstances ‘the piano can get you a lot closer to Bach’s conceptual notions that the harpsichord ever can.’”
28 March 2010
COMCAST escalated me... this would be laughable if it wasn't so damn frustrating....
In the chat posted below I'm typing back and forth with "Mark" because I'm trying to resolve a payment problem, one of the most common life experiences of modern consumerist mankind. I signed up for automatic payments, but I'm getting LATE notices because Comcast isn't actually doing what they said they'd do... take my money! If you have the patience, read all the way through the dialog below, because you'll see how they eventually handled my inquiry today. Your comments are very welcome on this, by the way....I got what they call "escalated" at least twice. I feel so important!
Problem: Ask Comcast Escalation
chat id : f26ccc60-d89b-49cd-aebf-c230efa61e0b
Problem : Ask Comcast Escalation
Anthony Miksak > Ask Comcast Escalation
Mark > Hello Anthony Miksak, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Mark. Please give me one moment to review your information.
Mark > How are you doing today?
Anthony Miksak > I have signed up (some time ago) for automatic payments, and have requested paper statements. It appears that I now own for two months, and that automatic payments are not being posted. Can you please check on this?
Anthony Miksak > I meant to write "I now owe..."
Mark > I see here that you signed up for automatic payments and it is not yet activated and now the account is past due.
Mark > I understand the trouble that this has caused you and I want you to know how sorry I am for the inconvenience. As your service representative today, I want you to know that your satisfaction is of my topmost priority and I assure you that we can resolve this issue together on this chat.
Mark > May I have the account number please.
Anthony Miksak > ok
Anthony Miksak > (snip snip snip)
Mark > Thank you.
Mark > Let me check this out for you Anthony.
Mark > Please give me a moment while I am pulling up the account.
Mark > While waiting, let me share with you a great Comcast feature. Have you heard of THE top TV destination on the Web? That's Fancast, dedicated to celebrating television by giving fans instant access to an extensive video collection of television shows, movies, trailers, and clips, so you can tune-in, catch-up, and chat about your favorite programming. Fancast also offers comprehensive editorial and blog coverage with in-depth recaps and analysis on what's hot and happening everyday in the world of television and entertainment. Want to start watching now? Go to http://www.fancast.com
Mark > Thank you for waiting.
Mark > Let me review on the account information carefully. Please standby.
Anthony Miksak > no problem...thank you
Mark > Thank you for waiting.
Mark > Anthony, may I ask when did you register for automatic payment?
Mark > Activation would usually take 30-45 days Anthony.
Anthony Miksak > not certain... probably 2-3 months ago.
Anthony Miksak > I'm going to find a previous bill...
Anthony Miksak > I have three bills here. On Jan 4 I talked with a comcast rep and paid my bill by Amex. Then I noted on the next bill dated Feb 19 "we are set up for auto payments" and now on the current bill it appears we are NOT set up correctly... Does this match what you are seeing?
Anthony Miksak > I think 3-45 days have passed. What should I do now?
Mark > I apologize for the inconvenience Anthony. I would like to escalate this chat to our Internet Support.
Anthony Miksak > 30-45 days
Mark > PLease stay on the line.
Anthony Miksak > OK
Mark > Please wait, while the problem is escalated to another analyst
Tiwanna > Hi. How are you today?
Anthony Miksak > hello... a bit frustrated... can we please get this resolved?
Tiwanna > Analyst has closed chat and left the room
24 March 2010
It's Customer Appreciation Day
Since we spoke last week I’ve suddenly gotten old enough to enroll in Medicare. I now qualify for discounts on BART and Muni and half off my groceries, why not? I even managed this week finally to join the American Association of Altogether Ancient People (AAAAP).
This somewhat disconcerting plod to the grave is alleviated by the certain knowledge that some good things in life, mainly books and reading, will continue their march long after we drop away.
Two very strong essays appeared this week, both written by booksellers dedicated to their trade, their craft.
The newsletter Shelf Awareness reprinted a tribute to bookstore customers which had first appeared in the newsletter of Eagle Harbor Book Company on Bainbridge Island in Washington. It was written by Ann Combs. She is talking to you:
“As we continue to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Eagle Harbor Books, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the fact that one of the best things about working here is our customers: the small children who march into the store and know exactly where they are going even when a visiting grandparent doesn't, the people who patiently follow us around the store as we search for a book the computer assures us is available.
“We delight in customers who come to us for recommendations when they are about to go on a trip, or need a birthday present for a son-in-law and are particularly pleased when they come back later to report that our suggestion was a big success.
“We appreciate the customers who understand when a book takes longer to order and bring into the store than expected. We're grateful to those of you who tell us that you may check on the availability of a book on Amazon but ‘I come here to buy it.’ We listen when you describe your own favorite books, and we often find ourselves adding them to our own bedside stack.
“You customers amaze and intrigue us with your varied interests and opinions. We enjoy the conversations, the banter, the laughter. And we're thrilled that you customers come in to browse, to meet friends, to get a treat for your dog and simply to say hello. No wonder the 40 years seem to have sped by in a minute,” she writes.
That is true customer appreciation. Here in Mendocino, Christie Olson Day, owner of Gallery Bookshop, composed her own essay, her answer to the frequently asked question, why be an independent bookseller in this difficult era.
Christie writes, “We believe in the book. We believe in quieting the noise and listening to the stories. We believe in traveling far and wide between paper pages. We believe in touching the words, scribbling in the margins, and dogging the ears. We believe in surrounding ourselves with books long finished and books not yet read; in revisiting our younger selves each time we pull old favorites off the shelf.
“We believe in five-year-olds inking their names in big letters on the flyleaf. We believe in becoming someone else for four hundred pages. We believe in turning off the screens and unplugging the networks once in awhile. We believe in meeting the author, reading the footnotes, looking up the words and checking the references. We believe in holding our children on our laps and turning the pages together.
“We believe in standing shoulder to shoulder in comfortable silence with our fellow citizens before a good shelf of books; we believe in talking face to face with friends and strangers in the aisles of a good bookstore. We believe that together, readers, writers, books and bookstores can work magic.
“If you believe, please join us: SAVE THE WORLD. BUY A BOOK.”
I asked Christie how she came to write her manifesto, and she responded, “Well, a couple of very enthusiastic and committed staffers had been telling me for months that the bookshop needed a mission statement. I had played around with some ideas, but everything sounded sort of corporate to me. They didn't sound like (our store). I thought a mission statement should answer the ‘why’ question: Why does this business exist? Why are we working so very hard at what we do? I didn't come up with anything that I wanted to plaster all over the store, though, until one weekend when I was at home, doing chores. The Manifesto just started running through my head -- along with the word: ‘Manifesto’ -- and it really is the reason we're here.”
NOTES:
The Eagle Harbor Book Company runs one of the more interesting bookseller web sites:.
You can find my local bookstore, the inimitable Gallery Bookshop & Bookwinkle’s Children’s Books, here.
This somewhat disconcerting plod to the grave is alleviated by the certain knowledge that some good things in life, mainly books and reading, will continue their march long after we drop away.
Two very strong essays appeared this week, both written by booksellers dedicated to their trade, their craft.
The newsletter Shelf Awareness reprinted a tribute to bookstore customers which had first appeared in the newsletter of Eagle Harbor Book Company on Bainbridge Island in Washington. It was written by Ann Combs. She is talking to you:
“As we continue to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Eagle Harbor Books, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the fact that one of the best things about working here is our customers: the small children who march into the store and know exactly where they are going even when a visiting grandparent doesn't, the people who patiently follow us around the store as we search for a book the computer assures us is available.
“We delight in customers who come to us for recommendations when they are about to go on a trip, or need a birthday present for a son-in-law and are particularly pleased when they come back later to report that our suggestion was a big success.
“We appreciate the customers who understand when a book takes longer to order and bring into the store than expected. We're grateful to those of you who tell us that you may check on the availability of a book on Amazon but ‘I come here to buy it.’ We listen when you describe your own favorite books, and we often find ourselves adding them to our own bedside stack.
“You customers amaze and intrigue us with your varied interests and opinions. We enjoy the conversations, the banter, the laughter. And we're thrilled that you customers come in to browse, to meet friends, to get a treat for your dog and simply to say hello. No wonder the 40 years seem to have sped by in a minute,” she writes.
That is true customer appreciation. Here in Mendocino, Christie Olson Day, owner of Gallery Bookshop, composed her own essay, her answer to the frequently asked question, why be an independent bookseller in this difficult era.
Christie writes, “We believe in the book. We believe in quieting the noise and listening to the stories. We believe in traveling far and wide between paper pages. We believe in touching the words, scribbling in the margins, and dogging the ears. We believe in surrounding ourselves with books long finished and books not yet read; in revisiting our younger selves each time we pull old favorites off the shelf.
“We believe in five-year-olds inking their names in big letters on the flyleaf. We believe in becoming someone else for four hundred pages. We believe in turning off the screens and unplugging the networks once in awhile. We believe in meeting the author, reading the footnotes, looking up the words and checking the references. We believe in holding our children on our laps and turning the pages together.
“We believe in standing shoulder to shoulder in comfortable silence with our fellow citizens before a good shelf of books; we believe in talking face to face with friends and strangers in the aisles of a good bookstore. We believe that together, readers, writers, books and bookstores can work magic.
“If you believe, please join us: SAVE THE WORLD. BUY A BOOK.”
I asked Christie how she came to write her manifesto, and she responded, “Well, a couple of very enthusiastic and committed staffers had been telling me for months that the bookshop needed a mission statement. I had played around with some ideas, but everything sounded sort of corporate to me. They didn't sound like (our store). I thought a mission statement should answer the ‘why’ question: Why does this business exist? Why are we working so very hard at what we do? I didn't come up with anything that I wanted to plaster all over the store, though, until one weekend when I was at home, doing chores. The Manifesto just started running through my head -- along with the word: ‘Manifesto’ -- and it really is the reason we're here.”
NOTES:
The Eagle Harbor Book Company runs one of the more interesting bookseller web sites:.
You can find my local bookstore, the inimitable Gallery Bookshop & Bookwinkle’s Children’s Books, here.
18 March 2010
Bilingual and Lovin' It
I speak two languages. Many of you do that and more.
In English, I do fine. In Italian, well, let’s just say I have the language skills of a bright four year-old, but I’m working on it. In French? Don’t ask, and for certain don’t ask in French.
Still, I would be considered bilingual by scholarly definition, and therefore by Francois Grosjean, author of the newly published book “Bilingual: Life and Reality.”
Grosjean writes, “In a bicultural’s lifetime, cultures can wax and wane, become dominant for a while before taking a secondary role. In my own case, I feel that I have changed my dominant culture four times since becoming bicultural: it was English in my teenage years, French until age twenty-eight, American until I was forty, and it has been Swiss since then.”
When I was very small, living on Wood Street in San Francisco, Yiddish was the lingua franca; everyone shouted to everyone else in that friendly hybrid of a Jewish middle-European language. Then came English, Polish, Russian, you name it.
Soon the Yiddish faded away, through attrition and a general move to less ghetto-ish neighborhoods. When I got around to reading Leo Rosten’s books “The Joys of Yiddish” and the hilarious “The Education of H*y*m*a*n K*a*p*l*a*n” I felt somehow at home again.
There are something like 7,000 languages alive in the world today. Europe has 239 of them; there are as many as 1,310 languages spoken on various islands in the Pacific Ocean. “With so many languages in the world... a lot of contact is bound to take place between people of different language groups,” Grosjean writes.
Bilingualism can result from geographic proximity, immigration, acquisition in school, global trade, military invasions, deafness, even colonization. In fact, the person who doesn’t have some familiarity with one or more other languages is rare.
In the US after English, Spanish is the most frequently used first or second language of some 28 million speakers. After Spanish “one finds several Asian languages (Chinese, Tagalog, Korean, Vietnamese) as well as European languages... A number of languages that were in the top ten in the middle of the 20th century, such as Yiddish and the Scandinavian languages, had fallen off strongly by the census of 2000... Yiddish speakers had gone from 1.7 million in 1940 to fewer than 200,000 in (that census) and it was mainly being spoken by elderly individuals.”
In this book Grosjean sets out to dispel fifteen myths, among them that bilinguals have equal and perfect knowledge of their languages; that bilinguals have split personalities; that knowing two languages somehow hurts the development of children.
He starts with a story that can’t fail to draw you into this interesting book:
“In the span of a few hours this Monday morning, I bought croissants in French from the baker’s wife, who then served the next client in Swiss German; I accompanied my bilingual wife into town to meet her trilingual Italian-French-German friend; I stopped by my garage to have my car checked by a mechanic of Portuguese origin, who explained to me, in French, how the cooling system worked. While going from one place to another, I listened to the radio... and heard... Roger Federer in London, talking about the final he had played at Wimbeldon. He was tired, having... given interviews in his four different languages (Swiss German, German, French, and English).
“Now, as I am settling down at my desk, accompanied by the music of George Frideric Handel, a German-Italian-English trilingual, I can hear the children in the day-care center across the street singing songs in French and Italian. Bilingualism is indeed present in practically every country in the world, in all classes of society, in all age groups. It has been estimated that half of the world’s population, if not more, is bilingual. This book is about them.”
NOTES:
Bilingual: Life & Reality by Francois Grosjean. Harvard University Press hard cover $25.95. ISBN 978-0-674-04887-4.
Interested readers can contact the author by means of his Web site.
The Education of H*y*m*a*n K*a*p*l*a*n by Leo Rosten. Mariner Books paperback $12.00. ISBN 0156278111. From the publisher: “The humorous adventures of Hyman Kaplan, the irrepressible student at the American Night Preparatory School for Adults, and his personal war with the English language. A classic work of American humor.”
The New Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten (revised in 2003 by Lawrence Bush). Three Rivers Press paperback $19.95. ISBN 0609806920.
In English, I do fine. In Italian, well, let’s just say I have the language skills of a bright four year-old, but I’m working on it. In French? Don’t ask, and for certain don’t ask in French.
Still, I would be considered bilingual by scholarly definition, and therefore by Francois Grosjean, author of the newly published book “Bilingual: Life and Reality.”
Grosjean writes, “In a bicultural’s lifetime, cultures can wax and wane, become dominant for a while before taking a secondary role. In my own case, I feel that I have changed my dominant culture four times since becoming bicultural: it was English in my teenage years, French until age twenty-eight, American until I was forty, and it has been Swiss since then.”
When I was very small, living on Wood Street in San Francisco, Yiddish was the lingua franca; everyone shouted to everyone else in that friendly hybrid of a Jewish middle-European language. Then came English, Polish, Russian, you name it.
Soon the Yiddish faded away, through attrition and a general move to less ghetto-ish neighborhoods. When I got around to reading Leo Rosten’s books “The Joys of Yiddish” and the hilarious “The Education of H*y*m*a*n K*a*p*l*a*n” I felt somehow at home again.
There are something like 7,000 languages alive in the world today. Europe has 239 of them; there are as many as 1,310 languages spoken on various islands in the Pacific Ocean. “With so many languages in the world... a lot of contact is bound to take place between people of different language groups,” Grosjean writes.
Bilingualism can result from geographic proximity, immigration, acquisition in school, global trade, military invasions, deafness, even colonization. In fact, the person who doesn’t have some familiarity with one or more other languages is rare.
In the US after English, Spanish is the most frequently used first or second language of some 28 million speakers. After Spanish “one finds several Asian languages (Chinese, Tagalog, Korean, Vietnamese) as well as European languages... A number of languages that were in the top ten in the middle of the 20th century, such as Yiddish and the Scandinavian languages, had fallen off strongly by the census of 2000... Yiddish speakers had gone from 1.7 million in 1940 to fewer than 200,000 in (that census) and it was mainly being spoken by elderly individuals.”
In this book Grosjean sets out to dispel fifteen myths, among them that bilinguals have equal and perfect knowledge of their languages; that bilinguals have split personalities; that knowing two languages somehow hurts the development of children.
He starts with a story that can’t fail to draw you into this interesting book:
“In the span of a few hours this Monday morning, I bought croissants in French from the baker’s wife, who then served the next client in Swiss German; I accompanied my bilingual wife into town to meet her trilingual Italian-French-German friend; I stopped by my garage to have my car checked by a mechanic of Portuguese origin, who explained to me, in French, how the cooling system worked. While going from one place to another, I listened to the radio... and heard... Roger Federer in London, talking about the final he had played at Wimbeldon. He was tired, having... given interviews in his four different languages (Swiss German, German, French, and English).
“Now, as I am settling down at my desk, accompanied by the music of George Frideric Handel, a German-Italian-English trilingual, I can hear the children in the day-care center across the street singing songs in French and Italian. Bilingualism is indeed present in practically every country in the world, in all classes of society, in all age groups. It has been estimated that half of the world’s population, if not more, is bilingual. This book is about them.”
NOTES:
Bilingual: Life & Reality by Francois Grosjean. Harvard University Press hard cover $25.95. ISBN 978-0-674-04887-4.
Interested readers can contact the author by means of his Web site.
The Education of H*y*m*a*n K*a*p*l*a*n by Leo Rosten. Mariner Books paperback $12.00. ISBN 0156278111. From the publisher: “The humorous adventures of Hyman Kaplan, the irrepressible student at the American Night Preparatory School for Adults, and his personal war with the English language. A classic work of American humor.”
The New Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten (revised in 2003 by Lawrence Bush). Three Rivers Press paperback $19.95. ISBN 0609806920.
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