Hermosa Beach cont.
z..
in the town of Claremont after looking in at Pomona College I bought in Second Story Books--- a very good second hand bookshop owned by a young man who says he did not go to any college but who from his conversation seemed more literate, more involved with the reality of books than 90% of college and university English professors and who having read all the previous books of Alexander Theroux, especially taken by DARCONVILLE'S CAT--- was pleased to be stocking Theroux's new novel LAURA WARHOLA... which is already in the top three best books of all of 2008--- something you would not know from the stupid second rate review in the NYTimes by a fellow who was many months ahead of time bragging in the basement of the Strand Bookstore in NYC that he had panned the book and who by his conversation revealed that he simply was unaware of AT's work and being possessed of a pedestrian mind was incapable of reviewing such a novel: in fact if he even read the novel is probably a question that might be worth perusing.
The TLS gave AT's novel a full page review and there the reviewer revealed a close understanding of Theroux work and easily grasped the delicious difficulty of the novel and how because of the shadow it casts...
easily distracted by these irritations that sliver from the NYTimes... and like so many other infiltrations from the East--- driving to Pomona College you have to cross Yale and Harvard Streets--- reminding one of the terrible power these colleges have in spite of the fact that they are mere training schools for the most part and to try to imagine them in PAUL GOODMAN'S phrase, as COMMUNITY OF SCHOLARS--- you get my point: Pomona seems the ideal size for a college: 900 some students... orange trees growing outside the dorm rooms... a many million volume library...
yes, at SECOND STORY i bought three books: THE CALIFORNIA DESERTS by Edmund C. Jaeger
PARIS PEASANT by Louis Aragon in the Exact Change Press edition ( Aragon's only real book as afterwards he gave himself over to the worship of Stalin)
THE DIAMONDS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA AND OTHER STORIES by Desmond Hogan (to replace an earlier copy that had become water damaged)
y...
before going to Claremont I was at the Nixon Library and Presidential museum... thoughtful people know that Nixon is the only American president of the Twentieth Century who would have interested Shakespeare...
again, i was reminded of how trivial Kennedy seemed when placed side by side with Nixon in those famous debates: the smirking, hair caressing Kennedy was again in evidence on a television screen, complete with that aura of demanding unearned entitlement
but it is what one sees at the end of the tour that interested me: a re-creation of the last study of Nixon's in his residence in New Jersey on April 18, 1994. Books are arranged on his desk that one can only assume--- unless it is all a sad charade--- were being read, looked into, what-have-you: Democracy and Leadership by Irving Babbitt, Flaubert by Henri Troyat, Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche (in the Penguin paperback edition)... on a shelf to the right a book on Carl Schmitt by Paul Gottfried...
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
i was reminded: Nixon established the EPA in the face of--- as they say in the street--- fierce Democratic opposition---
i did buy a t-shirt celebrating Nixon's bowling ability...
the Nixon grave site is very close to the actual modest house he was born in midst what was once an orange grove...
Showing posts with label ALEXANDER THEROUX. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ALEXANDER THEROUX. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
ANNIE DILLARD, ALEXANDER THEROUX, HOLLINS COLLEGE, GOING TO PATCHOGUE
99
I picked up a copy of the bound galleys of ANNIE DILLARD'S new novel THE MAYTREES at the downtown Strand Bookstore. $1.49. An N was penciled in at the upper left hand corner of the cover. It was a reject from the rare book room. The book is written as if from a great distance and seems to echo in some way--- beyond my ability to figure out--- EVAN CONNELL'S novels MR BRIDGE and MRS BRIDGE.
I first met Annie Dillard at Hollins College in 1969-70. She had been a student at the college and had married Richard Dillard who was a professor. She spent a lot of time in the little snack bar near the library. She must have heard me talking about an incident in Patchogue as it later appeared in her now famous PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK. (I am not going to take down that book to find the exact page. One has to have some slight dignity)
I put my own story into my own little book GOING TO PATCHOGUE (Dalkey Archive):
Dad talks of the first winter. On the morning when the bay froze over for the first time I went down to the beach and walked out on the ice. Sea gulls had been trapped in the ice. Some of them were still alive. I hit them over the head with a piece of drift lumber. Then I took a penknife and cut the bodies off at the first joint of the leg. I left behind a little forest of bloody stumps. We had a lot of sea gull soup that first winter.
63
I last saw Annie in the 1980s at a bookstore up near the Museum of Natural History--- long gone now, but once one of the great bookstores. She was signing books and I was surprised that the line was out of the store and into the street. Men, women, all ages and dress, lined up with piles of her books. She was famous, an authority, a knower of nature and of the finer feelings, one sensed
87
As my year at Hollins College wore on Lilia and I drifted apart. I went up to New York City. Lilia stayed at Hollins College where she received two and half years credit for being Bulgarian and having been a gymnazium student in Sofia. Annie would talk to Lilia and suggest that she marry a professor but make sure he is tenured. It is the perfect life. Lilia was not interested in that as she was interested in the very young son of the the Dean of the College; she did not marry him.
Within a year of winning the Pulitizer Prize for PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK Annie Dillard was done with Richard--- but kept his name as Doak simply does not--- and years later George Garrett told me Annie had moved on to husband number two because he was younger and would be the father for her child and when that ended she realized she needed an older man for husband number three and to whom she could read the reviews of her books without him getting jealous... this story has been told hundreds of times across the South.
88
Last year when I was preparing to drive my daughter to Vanderbilt, George was again telling me an ANNIE DILLARD story as relayed by her former husband still living in Hollins, near Roanoke. It seems Annie was in the mountains nearby and having a hard time writing. Would Richard have dinner with her. He agreed as they were still friendly after a fashion. The dinner went well enough and as they were leaving and saying goodbye in the parklng lot Annie suddenly asked Richard if he could do a favour for her. He agreed and she asked could he dispose of her garbage as there was no collection at the cabin where she was living. She opened the trunk of the car and it was stuffed with large plastic bags of weeks of garbage. It seemed like old times, Richard said. I was always taking out her garbage back then.
43
There is a whole other area of conversation about Annie Dillard when it comes to blurbs... but that has to be for another time...
12
GOOD NEWS. GOOD NEWS. GOOD NEWS. Steve Moore wrote and told me that he had just received his copy of ALEXANDER THEROUX'S LAURA WARHOLIC or, The Sexual Intellectual. A Novel. 888 pages. The perfect way to end the year.
I picked up a copy of the bound galleys of ANNIE DILLARD'S new novel THE MAYTREES at the downtown Strand Bookstore. $1.49. An N was penciled in at the upper left hand corner of the cover. It was a reject from the rare book room. The book is written as if from a great distance and seems to echo in some way--- beyond my ability to figure out--- EVAN CONNELL'S novels MR BRIDGE and MRS BRIDGE.
I first met Annie Dillard at Hollins College in 1969-70. She had been a student at the college and had married Richard Dillard who was a professor. She spent a lot of time in the little snack bar near the library. She must have heard me talking about an incident in Patchogue as it later appeared in her now famous PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK. (I am not going to take down that book to find the exact page. One has to have some slight dignity)
I put my own story into my own little book GOING TO PATCHOGUE (Dalkey Archive):
Dad talks of the first winter. On the morning when the bay froze over for the first time I went down to the beach and walked out on the ice. Sea gulls had been trapped in the ice. Some of them were still alive. I hit them over the head with a piece of drift lumber. Then I took a penknife and cut the bodies off at the first joint of the leg. I left behind a little forest of bloody stumps. We had a lot of sea gull soup that first winter.
63
I last saw Annie in the 1980s at a bookstore up near the Museum of Natural History--- long gone now, but once one of the great bookstores. She was signing books and I was surprised that the line was out of the store and into the street. Men, women, all ages and dress, lined up with piles of her books. She was famous, an authority, a knower of nature and of the finer feelings, one sensed
87
As my year at Hollins College wore on Lilia and I drifted apart. I went up to New York City. Lilia stayed at Hollins College where she received two and half years credit for being Bulgarian and having been a gymnazium student in Sofia. Annie would talk to Lilia and suggest that she marry a professor but make sure he is tenured. It is the perfect life. Lilia was not interested in that as she was interested in the very young son of the the Dean of the College; she did not marry him.
Within a year of winning the Pulitizer Prize for PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK Annie Dillard was done with Richard--- but kept his name as Doak simply does not--- and years later George Garrett told me Annie had moved on to husband number two because he was younger and would be the father for her child and when that ended she realized she needed an older man for husband number three and to whom she could read the reviews of her books without him getting jealous... this story has been told hundreds of times across the South.
88
Last year when I was preparing to drive my daughter to Vanderbilt, George was again telling me an ANNIE DILLARD story as relayed by her former husband still living in Hollins, near Roanoke. It seems Annie was in the mountains nearby and having a hard time writing. Would Richard have dinner with her. He agreed as they were still friendly after a fashion. The dinner went well enough and as they were leaving and saying goodbye in the parklng lot Annie suddenly asked Richard if he could do a favour for her. He agreed and she asked could he dispose of her garbage as there was no collection at the cabin where she was living. She opened the trunk of the car and it was stuffed with large plastic bags of weeks of garbage. It seemed like old times, Richard said. I was always taking out her garbage back then.
43
There is a whole other area of conversation about Annie Dillard when it comes to blurbs... but that has to be for another time...
12
GOOD NEWS. GOOD NEWS. GOOD NEWS. Steve Moore wrote and told me that he had just received his copy of ALEXANDER THEROUX'S LAURA WARHOLIC or, The Sexual Intellectual. A Novel. 888 pages. The perfect way to end the year.
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