LEISURELY THOUGHTS
from Howard
30 June 2004. Still jet-lagging, but back home in Minneapolis after ten great, if not particularly summer-like, days in northern Europe.
I still am drawn to Amsterdam after seven or so trips there in the last five years. It has the right combination of character, history, tolerance, and lack of inhibition that inspires me to write, or at least to ponder writing. If I were to win the lottery (which would be difficult since I hardly ever play the lottery), I fantasize moving off to Amsterdam for a year or two to write my book. That's silly, of course: If I had any self-discipline, I could write it here at home in between life's other stuff.
Side trips to Berlin and Copenhagen were not as relaxing as life on the houseboat in Amsterdam, but both were interesting and exotic cities. A highlight in Berlin: It turned out that we were there for the Christopher Street Day celebration.
To quote Copenhagen's favorite son, Hans Christian Andersen: To Travel is To Live.
And as Minnesota favorite daughter, Judy Garland, once said: "Oh, Auntie Em, There's no place like home!"
19 June 2004. We're packed and ready for a flight this evening to Amsterdam, that inspiring city that has become sort of a home away from home for us. We try to get there for a houseboat retreat (in the middle of the city) once a year or so. This trip, we are also venturing by train to Berlin and to Copenhagen, for a couple of nights in each of those cities, both of which will be new for me.
Books I'm taking along in my backpack: I'm midway through my re-reading of A Widow For One Year, by, of course, John Irving, and it will be fun to finish the Amsterdam segments right there next to the red-light district. I'm also starting Anna Karenina by Tolstoy (of course), thus joining the Oprah Winfrey summer reading of that classic. (Also reading Anna Karenina are my sister Joan and my co-worker and friend Michael [the Poet]).
We are back in Minneapolis on the 30th. It seems funny to be leaving Minneapolis where the weather is near perfect right now (but this year particularly infested with mosquitoes) to vacation in a place where the forecast is for several days of rain. Oh well. When we get back, we'll catch up on what we missed: the openings of two new movies I want to see -- The Door in the Floor (the film adaptation of A Widow For One Year) [Later note: the opening of The Door in the Floor was postponed until July] and Michael Moore's newest, Fahrenheit 9/11. And we'll pick up a copy of Bill Clinton's autobiography, due to be released next week.
See you soon. Keep in touch.
16 June 2004. Today is the hundredth anniversary of an important literary date.
All 1000+ pages of Ulysses, the famed James Joyce novel that some people call the best, or at least the most impressive, English-language novel ever written, take place on one day: 16 June 1904, one hundred years ago today. The story is, basically, the main character Leopold Bloom's "journey" through Dublin on that day, a stream-of-consciousness delight if you're into such things. Which, apparently, I am not.
I tried to read Ulysses three or four years ago and made it through maybe a third of the book. My sister Joan and my brother Ronnie were trying to read it at the same time -- one of our ill-fated family book efforts (Only Ronnie made it all the way through). Some call Ulysses unreadable. I didn't find it unreadable -- I sort of thought I understood what was going on. I would read a chapter, then read the explanation or interpretation in Cliff's Notes. Big mistake! It was like I was reading a totally different book from the Cliff's Notes people. Either I'm a total idiot or it's all a colossal joke.
In any case, I wish a "Happy 100th Bloomsday" to all, James Joyce-appreciators and non. We can still celebrate the mind of James Joyce, the wide boundaries of the English language, and, most importantly, that city where there will be parties today, DUBLIN!... (which my two sons just returned from and loved!... Jon's going back in September).
23 May 2004. My sons Jon and Tom, along with their mom, are currently on a ten-day trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland, a trip they have been meticulously planning for several months. Jon and Tom: If are finding an internet cafe somewhere -- I hope you are enjoying your vacation as much as you were anticipating. They visited Ireland for the first time in 1998.
My friend Elke, there on the German North Sea, heads out to sea for the summer with her husband Peter any day now. This is the sixth year they have spent most of the summer on their boat, Helena, exploring Norwegian islands and such (Elke takes along plenty of books to read). I miss her daily emails, though, while she is gone.
Jerry and I head off on our first trip to Europe this year on 19 June for ten days. We were be spending five days in Amsterdam (our favorite), and a couple of days each in Berlin and in Copenhagen.
Which means that, among other things, I won't be here for the June premiere of The Door in the Floor, the film adaptation of the great John Irving novel, A Widow For One Year, one of my favorite books. I guarantee that I will see it as soon as I can. I hear that John Irving is quite pleased with the film. I'm anxious to hear what the hardcore John Irving fans have to say about the movie.
05 May 2004 (Cinco de Mayo). A person might get the idea that I had no "leisurely thoughts" during March and April, and that wouldn't be all wrong. My work, unfortunately, is somewhat scrunched into the winter months, and by the middle of April I had been working fourteen-hour days regularly for several weeks. Now I'm back to a normal schedule and have been doing some catching up on normal life.
Jerry and I, both of us burned out by work, spent last week in Florida, at the Fort Myers condo belonging to friends of ours -- reading, napping, cooking, looking out over Sanibel Island and the Gulf of Mexico, refreshing. I finished reading five books, which is more than I had finished since the first of the year in total. Our next vacations won't be quite that tame: two trips to Europe are planned, one in June and one in late August/early September.
Best book I've read so far this year: Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke.
I'm ready to take my website, lately perhaps suffering from benign neglect, to the next level, in anticipation of the new John Irving novel that we might see next year. I just need to define what the next level is. Any suggestions?
21 March 2004. I received a couple of emails this week from Gregg in New Jersey. Gregg wrote to me because he saw John Irving speak the other night at the College of New Jersey and read from his novel-in-progress, Until I Find You, which most of us Irving fans are anxiously awaiting. This is what Gregg has to tell us: "[The book] will feature a tattooed breast on the cover that has a heart with the words 'Until I Find You' written in cursive around the heart. He read from a chapter this is 1100 manuscript pages into the book, which is his longest to date. It is a first-person narrative of an actor writing to his psychiatrist. He mentioned that the book won't be out until summer or fall of 2005, I believe."
John Irving also has some things to say about the soon-to-be-released movie, The Door in the Floor, which is the film version of part of the Irving novel A Widow For One Year. "John Irving said he thought it was the most faithful rendition of any of his books -- but only the first third of it. He's very happy with the result. He was equally unhappy with our current president, if such things can be reasonably compared."
It's good to hear all this (including the last sentence).... Thanks, Gregg!
29 February 2004. Ah, Leap Year once again.
And the Oscars are tonight. A dismal year for film, but, what the heck, we'll still watch the show from beginning to end -- and, this year, hope that nothing gets zapped by the censors.
Everybody is expecting Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to win everything, and I have to admit that it's the only one of the five Best Picture nominees that I didn't see (Hey, I saw the first two Lord of the Rings and slept through at least part of the second one -- so I get the general idea). The other nominees for Best Picture are Lost in Translation, Mystic River, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and Seabiscuit, and I liked them all except for Master and Commander, which I didn't follow at all. Of these choices, I would pick Mystic River as Best Picture (although I do have a bit of a soft spot for Lost in Translation).
For Best Actor, my choice would be Sean Penn in Mystic River (he's amazing!); for Best Actress, Charlize Theron in Monster (see that film!); Supporting Actor, Tim Robbins in Mystic River (and I'm hoping for a good anti-Bush speech); and Supporting Actress, Marcia Gay Harden in Mystic River. But I expect to see an evening of hobbits.
21 February 2004. Silence since 30 January, but never fear, dear surfer, I haven't forgotten you. Work days that don't end seem, for some reason, to wipe out my leisurely thoughts. It's just temporary. Jerry and I work our butts off during these winter months so that we have the time and the means to take those trips later to Europe or wherever.
My book group's selection for this month is Middlesex, and it sits next to my bed mostly unread. I can't fit a book with 544 pages into my schedule right now. I need to be reading something, though, so I'll switch to something shorter. Like maybe a poem! Middlesex, which seems to be a good novel (winner of last year's Pulitzer), will have to wait until I'm sitting by a pool in Palm Springs in April.
We find some other diversions. We took co-workers Michael (the Poet) and Dennis (the Iowan) to the Timberwolves game against the Sacramento Kings Thursday evening. Terrific game! Sometimes it feels good to scream.
30 January 2004. This morning, as I was walking the two blocks from home to my office, the temperature was -25 Fahrenheit (that's about -31 Celsius). My walk to work takes me along the Mississippi, looking across the river at downtown Minneapolis. This part of the river doesn't freeze, and, when the temperatures are below zero, steam constantly rises into the air above the water. When the sun shines on the steam against the skyline (and the sun shines mightily when the temps are this low), the visual effect is breathtaking.
And the week has been like that -- looking at the beautiful river scene and wishing that I were a photographer (with warm clothes). My work days are long now, well into the evenings, but Ol' Man River, he keeps on rolling along. Well, something like that.
Otherwise, it's been a week of no pleasure reading, uninteresting Oscar nominations, quick meals, adrenaline rushes, acid flashbacks. My son Tom has been staying with us this week, and we didn't even have time for a game of cards. Jerry, back this week from his campaign weekend in New Hampshire (which actually turned into a weekend in Boston instead), is reading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown and is hooked on it (and looking forward to DaVinci Code).
Elke in Germany is back to reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, that thirty-some year old contemporary classic that, coincidentally, was picked by the Oprah Winfrey Classic Book Club this week as the current selection. Because of that announcement, One Hundred Years of Solitude is already Number One on both barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com. Amazing! (Or was it because of my own announcement on 03 January that One Hundred Years of Solitude was the best book I read in 2003?) :-)
18 January 2004. January in Minnesota, back below zero degrees F. Jerry, meanwhile, is in Iowa for the weekend, campaigning for Howard Dean for President. Next week, Jerry will be in New Hampshire. Cold days to be knocking on doors in Des Moines or Manchester, but sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Working hard here, busy until at least April. We made reservations in Palm Springs for an April break. As long as there is light at the end of the tunnel, you can make it through anything.
I have high hopes for my Philadelphia Eagles in tonight's playoff game, but, by the time you read this, they may be already out of the playoffs -- or on their way to the SuperBowl. This Wednesday, I meet with my book group to see what they think of The Fourth Hand. I found my re-read of The Fourth Hand to be fun from beginning to end, and I have a new appreciation for this book. I still think Patrick Wallingford is not a very sympathetic character, but why should he be sympathetic? He's a modern American TV news person, a member of a shameful group exploiting people's fears just to keep people watching. Bring on the lions!
Slowly making it through the book I'm reading, Vernon God Little. A few pages and then I'm asleep (My brain is on overload, the book isn't so bad). I am looking forward to reading the new Anne Tyler book, The Amateur Marriage. Anne Tyler's writing can keep us all warm on cold winter nights.
05 January 2004. Some responses to my "what was the best book you read in 2003?" question:
- Jerry: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
- Jerry's sister Betty: Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell.
- My brother Ronnie in New Jersey: Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis.
- Ronnie's wife Vickie: Tell No One by Harlan Coben.
- Friends:
- Grietje (our friend in Germany and Elke's next door neighbor): Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.
- Michael (the poet): The Night Country by Loren Eiseley.
- Julia: The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.
- Paul: John Adams by David McCullough.
- Book group members (their "best fiction" choices):
- Barb: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett.
- Tonja: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett.
- John: Feast of Love by Charles Baxter.
- Barry: Til We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C.S. Lewis.
- The 2003 fiction awards:
- The National Book Award: The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard.
- The Pulitzer Prize: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.
- The Booker Prize: Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre.
And that last one, Vernon God Little, happens to be the book that I am currently reading. On to the 2004 list!
03 January 2004. Still looking back at 2003 and, among other things, the books we read this year. And the best book I read this past year?... Not easy to say, when it comes right down to it. Books aren't all that easy to compare, and what seems like a masterpiece one day might not seem so when your mood changes or the moon enters a new phase. I think I read a fairly wide variety of books this year -- some old, some new, fiction, non-fiction, modern classics, light reading...
I have to say, though, that the book that I think of as the "best", as the one that kept drawing me back the most and that I felt was also the best-written, is one of those that I should have read about thirty years ago and just finally got to -- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. Wonderful setting, characters and literary style. If you haven't read this, I recommend it highly.
The other two people whose reading habits we track on this website are my sister, Joan, and my friend in Germany, Elke. I value their opinions and always appreciate the range of their reading interests. I think they also had a difficult time selecting just one as "best" of all the books they read in 2003. Joan has chosen John Updike's latest novel, Seek My Face, as her favorite in 2003, and Elke has picked The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. Both are excellent choices.
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