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Part II: Biographies"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cdiv\u003EWho said her motto was \"Well, you can't expect to be liked in my business, but with any luck you can avoid going to jail\"?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA biographer.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA nine-time biographer (including of Frank Lloyd Wright and Salvador Dali) who wrote a memoir called\u0026nbsp;\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/discover.elgar.govt.nz\/iii\/encore\/record\/C__Rb2251185\"\u003EShoot the widow\u003C\/a\u003E, \u003C\/i\u003Ewhere she also avows that the purpose of biography is \"not just to record, but to reveal\".\u0026nbsp; Oh and did I mention anagrams in the last post? The biographer is named Meryle Secrest.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.syndetics.com\/index.php?isbn=9780307264831\/lc.jpg\u0026amp;client=elgar\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.syndetics.com\/index.php?isbn=9780307264831\/lc.jpg\u0026amp;client=elgar\" height=\"200\" width=\"120\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.syndetics.com\/index.php?isbn=9780307701596\/lc.jpg\u0026amp;client=elgar\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.syndetics.com\/index.php?isbn=9780307701596\/lc.jpg\u0026amp;client=elgar\" height=\"200\" width=\"133\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EI haven't read the book, though I might yet, but I did read a review of it by the American critic and essayist Louis Menand in The New Yorker, where he goes on to take an amusing look at various aspects of the biographer's creed, such as their assumption that the real truth about a person will always involve the thing least known about them, and their belief that if they can just get their hands on the letters, all will be explained.\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003EBut why, Menand asks? \"Why should we especially credit a remark made in a diary or a personal letter? People lie in letters all the time, and they use diaries to moan and vent... They are sites for gossip, flattery, and self-deception.\" I can quote it because I actually ripped his article out and saved it, I liked it so much. (It was a \u003Ci\u003Ewithdrawn \u003C\/i\u003ENew Yorker.)\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003EIn answer to the question, why do people like biographies so much, Menand says Secrest was to the point: people like gossip. And, he adds, they enjoy judging other people's lives. \"It's not one of the species' more attractive addictions, and, on the whole, it's probably better to indulge it on the life of a person you have never met\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESo let's indulge! I'm not going to recommend any particular biographies, because it comes down to whom you want to know more about, and you will know that better than I do. But I did want to remind everyone that you can see all the new biographies as they arrive by checking our\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz\/EN\/New\/newtitles\/Pages\/newbookslist.aspx?sec=Adult%20non-fiction\u0026amp;cat=Biography\u0026amp;my=201701\"\u003Enew titles list\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;every month. Just this month there are 215 new biographies at the library, ranging from\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/discover.elgar.govt.nz\/iii\/encore\/record\/C__Rb3229715\"\u003E\u003Ci\u003ECeleste\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E, the story of most celebrated\u003Ci\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003Ecourtesan in\u0026nbsp;\u003Ci\u003EBelle Epoque\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003EParis, to \u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/discover.elgar.govt.nz\/iii\/encore\/record\/C__Rb3291341\"\u003EEmma Goldman: revolution as a way of life\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E by the astute but never arch Vivian Gornick, who presented her own memoir \u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/discover.elgar.govt.nz\/iii\/encore\/record\/C__Rb3029537\"\u003EThe odd woman and the city\u003C\/a\u003E \u003C\/i\u003Eat the latest Auckland Writers Festival.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.syndetics.com\/index.php?isbn=9781250010025\/lc.jpg\u0026amp;client=elgar\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.syndetics.com\/index.php?isbn=9781250010025\/lc.jpg\u0026amp;client=elgar\" height=\"200\" width=\"130\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EFor my Great Summer Read, I'm reading the new biography of Joan Didion, \u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/discover.elgar.govt.nz\/iii\/encore\/record\/C__Rb3020171\"\u003EThe last love song\u003C\/a\u003E, \u003C\/i\u003Eby Tracy Daugherty, and I'm almost up to her childhood. Yes, because I firmly believe with big thick biographies like this one, the reader has the right to attack it any way they please. So for instance with Nicholas Shakespeare's big thick \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/discover.elgar.govt.nz\/iii\/encore\/record\/C__Rb1310935\"\u003EBruce Chatwin biography\u003C\/a\u003E, which was 600 pages, I just kept it by my bedside for a couple of months (or more) and would simply open it at random and read far enough to get through the episode, and then stop. Another day, another random dip. It absolutely fit that mercurial character and his nomadic lifestyle.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWith Joan, I've started at the end of the book, at the furthermost point from whatever we have in common -- namely, the present time, in which she is the literary \u003Ci\u003Edoyenne\u003C\/i\u003E of New York (which is to say of America). Also, I was eager to fill in the gaps in her magnetic but noticeably ungrounded (though not false), recent memoir \u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/discover.elgar.govt.nz\/iii\/encore\/record\/C__Rb2621626\"\u003EBlue Nights\u003C\/a\u003E. \u003C\/i\u003EThen I moved to the middle of the book, her time as movie industry royalty, this only \u003Ci\u003Ealmost\u003C\/i\u003E totally out of my range of experience, given that I had a boyfriend from Brentwood, the Los Angeles enclave where Didion lived for many of those years, and own a memory of a breakfast with him at a deli where her DNA was certainly floating around. And now I'm closing in on the opening chapters, to finish on the things which bring me closest to Joan: California girlhood, pioneer ancestors, close acquaintance with rattlesnakes, Highway 99, a fascination with the All-American canal.\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003EHow is the book? It's very very good, very very interesting, and very very well-written. But as far as revealing goes, I will say this. Asked by the man behind the \"Live from the NYPL\" author events to give him a seven word biography for his intro, Joan Didion responded with \"Seven words do not yet define me\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENeither does this book of 728 pages! Luckily!\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/feeds\/3035726738179440149\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2017\/01\/great-summer-read-read-memoir-or_12.html#comment-form","title":"0 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/3035726738179440149"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/3035726738179440149"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2017\/01\/great-summer-read-read-memoir-or_12.html","title":"Great Summer Read: Read a memoir or biography. Part II: Biographies"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Karen Craig"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/18310967522076681423"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"23","height":"32","src":"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-WaLn2rFYxqE\/UNvHlimMvBI\/AAAAAAAAABY\/ceYnAw1lZEk\/s220\/The%2BLibrarian.jpg"}}],"thr$total":{"$t":"0"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501884760724421053.post-2420174506193505251"},"published":{"$t":"2010-03-29T04:30:00.000+13:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2013-05-06T01:50:09.309+12:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"autobiographies"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Beryl Markham"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"biographies"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Bruce Chatwin"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Diagram Prize"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Graham Greene"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Karen"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Nicholas Shakespeare"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Oddest Title"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Diagram Prize announces year's oddest title!"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Ch4\u003E\u003Ci\u003ECrocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes\u003C\/i\u003E is the winner of the Diagram Prize for the year’s oddest title, followed by \u003Ci\u003EWhat Kind of Bean is this Chihuahua?\u003C\/i\u003E and \u003Ci\u003ECollectible Spoons of the Third Reich\u003C\/i\u003E.\u003C\/h4\u003EMy vote had gone to \u003Ci\u003ECollectible spoons of the Third Reich\u003C\/i\u003E. I was disappointed to see it come in behind a kids book (shouldn’t kids  books be handicapped, like overly endowed racehorses, in a contest for  odd titles?) but Horace Bent, custodian of the prize, more than made it  up to me with these comments quoted in the \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.thebookseller.com\/news\/114989-crocheting-adventures-wins-diagram-2009.html\"\u003EThe Bookseller's official announcement\u003C\/a\u003E on March 26th:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\"Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes\u003C\/i\u003E proved to be the  initial front runner. It defended its poll-topping position despite  strong support for the spoon-carrying Third Reich, once again attempting to muscle in on someone else’s territory.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"But the public proclivity towards non-Euclidian needlework proved  too great for the Third Reich to overcome. If only someone had let the  Poles know in ’39.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETitles have been on my mind recently. I finally got around to reading Nicholas Shakespeare’s biography of Bruce Chatwin, one of my favourite  literary personalities since the times of \u003Ci\u003EIn Patagonia\u003C\/i\u003E, considered one of the great travel books, which it is, but not only. \u003Ci\u003EIn Patagonia \u003C\/i\u003Eis the reason why, when we had to clear out my childhood home after my  parents died, I put at the top of the list of the things I wanted the  fragment of dinosaur egg which a student of my father’s had sent him  from some dig somewhere in France, and which resided ever after on the  dining room bookshelves amid H Rider Haggard books, family snapshots and rock samples. Those of you who have read \u003Ci\u003EIn Patagonia \u003C\/i\u003Ewill get it: it's my brontosaurus skin. If you haven't read it, do.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhen I saw how thick\u0026nbsp;Nicholas Shakespeare's\u0026nbsp;book\u0026nbsp;was, I was afraid  that it might be one of those biographies like Norman Sherry’s magnum  opus on Graham Greene, in which for every day of Mr.  Greene’s life we are given such details as where he had tea and what kinds of cakes he had, or the postcard he sent to his colleague at \u003Ci\u003EThe Times\u003C\/i\u003E, and what room that colleague's office was in. But it wasn’t. In fact, 600 pages seemed the only  length one could possibly use to close in – a bit – on someone as  complicated, contradictory, elusive and talented as Bruce Chatwin.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EI kept it on my bedside table and every night for about a month I’d  pick it up and read ten or twenty pages wherever the book opened to, and every time there’d be a different -- how does Yeats put it, \"the  careless planets in their courses”. Loulou de la Falaise, Werner Herzog, Robert Mapplethorpe, Gregor von Rezzori, and so on and so on, and… a  British film maker named Peter Adam, who wrote an autobiography with the fantastic title \u003Ci\u003ENot drowning but waving\u003C\/i\u003E. Maybe it’s because  I’m not English (I was told, as I went around the library enthusing,  that it’s a common phrase in Britain) but for me this went right up on  there on the best-ever autobiography titles list.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWho out there has played the game of\u0026nbsp; 'What would be the title of your  autobiography'?\u0026nbsp; Back in my twenties I found this jewel in an old  phrasebook for travellers and thought it could be mine: \u003Ci\u003EThe lady wants hers with cream\u003C\/i\u003E.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd now I’ve found a new one,\u0026nbsp;for\u0026nbsp;my prime.\u0026nbsp;\u003Ci\u003EDanger vehicle exit lane\u003C\/i\u003E.  Driving\u0026nbsp;into the Civic Car Park the other day I caught sight of this  trenchant, punctuation free warning on a sign posted alongside the  carriageway opposite mine.\u0026nbsp; My first thought\u0026nbsp; - I swear this is true -  was that it was indicating an exit lane reserved for “danger vehicles”  eg giant diggers and such. And it flashed through my mind\u0026nbsp;that if they  only knew, they’d be making me use that lane. This was a few days after  I’d knocked off a hubcap on the approach to the Hopetown bridge. I had  an image of my little white Vitz with its missing hubcap, like a tomcat  with a torn ear, bursting out of the Danger vehicle exit lane into the  night.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhich is my favourite autobiography title? Probably this one from the  great adventurer Beryl Markham, the first person to fly solo over the  Atlantic from east to west:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003EWest with the night\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cb\u003EAt the library:\u003C\/b\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/search.aucklandcitylibraries.com\/?itemid=%7Clibrary\/marc\/acl-iii%7Cb1310935\"\u003E\u003Ci\u003EBruce Chatwin\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E by Nicholas Shakespeare\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/search.aucklandcitylibraries.com\/?itemid=%7Clibrary\/marc\/acl-iii%7Cb1607742\"\u003E\u003Ci\u003EIn Patagonia\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E by Bruce Chatwin\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/search.aucklandcitylibraries.com\/?itemid=%7Clibrary\/marc\/acl-iii%7Cb1546923\"\u003EWest with the night\u003C\/a\u003E \u003C\/i\u003Eby Beryl Markham"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/feeds\/2420174506193505251\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2010\/03\/oddest-title-announced.html#comment-form","title":"0 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/2420174506193505251"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/2420174506193505251"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2010\/03\/oddest-title-announced.html","title":"Diagram Prize announces year's oddest title!"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"tosca"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"28","height":"32","src":"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-DKeaBNqmKUo\/VBStvJvL4cI\/AAAAAAAAR4M\/ZsfOjoSDymI\/s1600\/*"}}],"thr$total":{"$t":"0"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501884760724421053.post-8312760882511005689"},"published":{"$t":"2009-10-01T04:30:00.001+13:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2013-05-06T23:12:55.339+12:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Alexander Masters"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"biographies"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Donald Antrim"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Karen"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Manhattan When I Was Young"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Mary Cantwell"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Stuart: A Life Backwards"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"The Afterlife"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"What I'm readi"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"What I'm reading: offbeat biographies"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"Harbingers of summer, the bumblebees are back in my Scotch broom whirring, foraging and pollinating their little heads off. Is it just a coincidence that I am in an exceptionally fertile book pillaging moment? In particular, I’m having a lucky run of biographies, always a favourite read since my childhood library introduced me to the genre with the “little orange biographies” series of famous Americans, noted for always opening with a foretoken of future greatness: “Ben, where are you?\" called Mrs. Franklin. “That boy,” she sighed.\"Always with his head in the clouds, him and his kite.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHere are three offbeat biographies (actually memoirs) I've been reading: \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-pNYwPPqq0lY\/UMUgy9Sw-cI\/AAAAAAAAKJA\/d-Uz_qp2_s4\/s1600\/Stuart2.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-pNYwPPqq0lY\/UMUgy9Sw-cI\/AAAAAAAAKJA\/d-Uz_qp2_s4\/s400\/Stuart2.jpg\" width=\"157\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cb\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.elgar.govt.nz\/record=b1983672~S1\"\u003E1. Found by chance: \u003Ci\u003EStuart, a life backwards\u003C\/i\u003E by Alexander Masters\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/b\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cb\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/b\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile snooping in the mending shelf at Parnell Library, my eye was caught by a book cover with a drawing of a man in a big blue armchair, half-consumed cigarette dangling from his fingers, and a spine label saying it was the biography of someone whose last name started with SHO. I picked it up and skimmed the last few pages as I usually do when considering a book. Someone named Stuart was hit and killed by the 11:15 PM London to Kings Lynn train.    I read, “Death had just shrieked past like a stinking black eagle and made off with a remarkable man”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWho was this remarkable man Stuart Sho-----  (a quick flip through the pages revealed no mention of a last name) and why was some Alexander Masters writing about him in terms like that? A journalist? A literary agent? Carol, the Parnell Community Librarian and invariably up-to-date reader, was as mystified as I was. We were off to a meeting but not before I made her promise to release the book to me as soon as the bandages came off.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhen it duly arrived and I started reading it, I realized that I had actually seen this book reviewed. Stuart is an ex-homeless, ex-junkie, still a “chaotic\" as they call it, often funny and at times psychopathic person, and the book is both a narrative by Alexander Masters of how he and Stuart meet and become friends, and a working back through Stuart’s past, prompted by Masters, who is trying to find out where it all went so wrong for him. Stuart isn’t. He wants to be in a Tom Clancy-type novel and he worries that it will be a boring book. It's not, Stuart!\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cb\u003E2. \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.elgar.govt.nz\/record=b1265462~S1\"\u003EBy a friend’s orders: \u003Ci\u003EManhattan, when I was young\u003C\/i\u003E by Mary Cantwell\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/b\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cb\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/b\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhen Julian Dashper told me, soon after we met, that I had to read this book,  I thought that in that way in which people, when they are at an impressionable age, fall in love with a certain place or time through its books, or art, or music, that for Julian it would have been New York in the glory days of the 50s and 60s when Mary Cantwell was clicking through mid-town Manhattan in shoes called pumps on her way to her job writing smart copy for \u003Ci\u003EMademoiselle\u003C\/i\u003E magazine, living in Greenwich Village, drinking espresso at the Peacock Café.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EI did get it out then, but I never finished it, although it was, well, sweet. Then when Julian died I was struck by the urge to go back and read the whole thing. It was checked out to another friend of Julian’s. “I didn’t finish it”, she said when I saw her at his funeral. “But it was sweet.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENow that I’ve read the whole thing I think that what Julian liked, as much as the descriptions of place, was the feeling which pervades the book of what it’s like when you’re young and romantic and you want something so much it’s palpable. “I look like New York.” Mary Cantwell would say to herself in her giddy teenage moments, checking out her face in the mirror, and that’s where she went, with her “suitcase full of unsuitable clothes”. And what happened afterwards, which as it turns out was not all sweet by any means, she counted a fair bargain.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cb\u003E3. \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.elgar.govt.nz\/record=b2211502~S1\"\u003EReserved online after spotting review: \u003Ci\u003EThe afterlife\u003C\/i\u003E by Donald Antrim\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/b\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cb\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/b\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMy grandmother had red hair and “the lovely high cheekbones for arrogance”, as Hemingway said of his first wife Hadley. I’m sure they served her well when she swept all the French perfumes off the counter at Saks Fifth Avenue to shatter on the floor, after the snooty saleswoman insulted her husband who had undergone a laryngectomy for esophageal cancer. In her youth she had studied with the Ballets Russes -- \"just long enough to justify a Grand Tour\" she confided -- and earned herself the newspaper headline “Student of Russian Ballet Master Enlivens Rather Dull Evening at Nice by Executing Original Steps Before Municipal Casino Crowd”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EShe was also an alcoholic, which meant rambling late night phone calls which my father would try to foist off on us kids suddenly unanimously overwhelmed by homework, and in-person appearances and then sudden disappearances as dictated by the quarrel or grudge of the moment, but also funny letters about things like what it smells like if you put out your cigarette in a tube of airplane glue. Donald Antrim’s mother was also an alcoholic, and this is the book he wrote – not so much about what it was like for him, as trying to figure out what he thinks about what it was like. I’m about half-way through. Whatever else happens, just the description of her bizarre “artistic” fashion creation kimono will have made this book worth the read, bringing back so vividly as it does all the feelings, including love, these fantastic and troubling people inspire.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/feeds\/8312760882511005689\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2009\/09\/what-im-reading-continued.html#comment-form","title":"0 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/8312760882511005689"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/8312760882511005689"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2009\/09\/what-im-reading-continued.html","title":"What I'm reading: offbeat biographies"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"tosca"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"28","height":"32","src":"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-DKeaBNqmKUo\/VBStvJvL4cI\/AAAAAAAAR4M\/ZsfOjoSDymI\/s1600\/*"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-pNYwPPqq0lY\/UMUgy9Sw-cI\/AAAAAAAAKJA\/d-Uz_qp2_s4\/s72-c\/Stuart2.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"0"}}]}});