escorting elizabeth edwards
Elizabeth Edwards had been abandoned at a venue by her handlers and needed an escort. One of the event organizers caught me rummaging through the craft service, otherwise idle, and asked if I would be so kind – I certainly would.
Edwards didn’t look sixty. Or sick. And more than anything, I remember being taken aback at how present and content she seemed, despite her circumstances. I called her Elizabeth when introducing myself and cringed at my own informality.
She noticed and laughed, “Buffy is an old English nickname for Elizabeth, you know.” I said I knew and mentioned The Queen Mum. Edwards asked about my accent, “Kentucky or Northern Ireland?” I said she was very nearly spot-on, on both counts, and told her the story about how I came to be where I came to be.
We chatted briefly about the health care system in the UK. The need for improvement and expansion at home. About literacy in the mountains. And about Eudora Welty. I gushed about southern gothic, its influence on me, and my own ambitions.
“Don’t wait.” That’s what she said to me. “You’re never too old. But don’t wait.”
Elizabeth Edwards waited thirty years, after studying literature at UNC Chapel Hill in the seventies, to return to her writing. When we met she was promoting her second memoir, “Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities”. I apologized for not having read it, admitted my embarrassment. She smiled and told me how much she loved the campus we were on.
That was last year.
I’ve thought about our brief encounter often. Edward’s advice, ‘don’t wait’, and how loaded that phrase must have been. Her passing really does sadden my heart.
only after a writer is dead: the recorded voice of virginia woolf
“Only after a writer is dead…”
If you enter the John Ritblat Gallery in the British Library from the upper level and turn left to the first list of recordings, you can listen on headphones to a short extract from Virginia Woolf’s only recording. Part of a BBC radio broadcast on 29 April 1937, the recording was only a short part of ‘Craftsmanship’ (reprinted in The Death of the Moth).
Interestingly, it starts one sentence earlier than we usually hear, with: ‘Only after the writer is dead…’
pinkie brown
Listening to Joy Division and chatting about Sam Riley, the brilliant actor who played Ian Curtis in the 2007 movie “Control” and more recently, Pinkie Brown, in the film adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel Brighton Rock. (Also, Sal Paradise in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.)
If I’ve never gushed over Brighton Rock it’s only because I don’t know how. I feel the same about Greene as I do about Faulkner, neither knew how to mislay a word. Much as I rate Sam Riley, I can’t imagine he’ll do justice to the character created by Greene. (Though I’d happily be proved wrong.) But when it comes to Brighton itself, John Mathieson, the film’s cinematographer, has done more to turn the place into a living, breathing being than Greene ever did…at least for me.
Christmas Wish List: Brighton Rock (2010)
the perks of being a wallflower
“On Friday night, I was reading my new book, but my brain got tired, so I decided to watch some television instead.”
— The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
stephen king & kindle
“I didn’t do ‘Ur’ for money. I did it because it was interesting. I’m fairly prolific. It took three days, and I’ve made about $80,000. You can’t get that for short fiction from Playboy or anybody else. It’s ridiculous.” – Stephen King
In 2009 Stephen King released “Ur” – an exclusive novella he published on the launch of the Kindle 2. In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal King revealed how much he earned on the story.
I’ve never touched a Kindle. I do have an iPad – I subscribe to Press Display and read most of my European newspapers on it. I’ve also read the odd short story this way, but no novels yet. And I’m not sure I ever will. Still, the kind of figures King talks about reveal an audience hungry for digital reading.
In a separate interview King made an interesting point when he noted the difference between downloading books and downloading music. With music, you’re free to download singles. Just the songs you like. You don’t have to buy the whole album. With novels it’s all or nothing. You don’t purchase it piecemeal.
sometimes a hat is just a hat
Week before last I went to Wesleyan and read ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find.’ After, I went to one of the classes where I was asked questions. There were a couple of young teachers there and one of them, an earnest type, started asking the questions. ‘Miss O’Connor,” he said, ‘why was the Misfit’s hat black?’ I said most countrymen in Georgia wore black hats. He looked pretty disappointed. Then he said, ‘Miss O’Connor, the Misfit represents Christ, does he not?’ ‘He does not,’ I said. He looked crushed. ‘Well, Miss O’Connor,’ he said, ‘what is the significance of the Misfit’s hat?’ I said it was to cover his head; and after that he left me alone. Anyway, that’s what’s happening to the teaching of literature.
- Flannery O’Connor in a letter to Dr. T. R. Spivey, May 25, 1959.
the long weekend
I starting running again last week. Planned to keep it up over the long weekend. My daily ritual, to ward off stress and keep my body strong. I’ve given up on the idea of weight loss. The idea that ‘it’ll all be better if I can just shave off this last stone’. Life comes and goes, no matter.
This weekend I took long naps and ate cinnamon cookies and read.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
OMG. Yep. This has always been presented to me as a YA book and until recently, other than Carrie Ryan, I haven’t been too well versed in that genre. In spite of my love for The Lottery, I’ve never got around to reading any of Shirley Jackson’s longer works. I bought this one (The Penguin Deluxe Classic Edition) because I loved the cover illustration by Thomas Ott. One of the most emotionally disturbing books I’ve read in a very long time…a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family.
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Michael Cunningham is such a beautiful writer. He brings to mind Elizabeth Stroud, whom I adore to no end. Stroud always leaves you with such a lovely feeling, and given the subject matter of The Hours, it says a lot, I think, that Cunningham can still pull off that same sense of loveliness. Where Stroud lifts your heart, Cunningham, here, heavys it. Still, beautiful writing. Exquisite.
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
I walked away a bit unsatisfied. Aggravated. And maybe that’s the point. That’s probably exactly the point. There’s no denying McEwans’s literary chops. His brain makes my eyes bleed. A shortish novel. Maybe even a novella. Is it? The depiction of two young lovers eager to rise above the hurts and confusion of the past, and how their unexpressed misunderstandings and fears shape the rest of their lives. On Chesil Beach shows us how the entire course of a life can be changed – by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.
A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene
I’ll read anything written by Graham Greene – his sparse beautiful style – and I’ll love it. I like the way Piers Paul Read described Greene’s novels – genuine romans philosophiques – novels illustrating ideas. In A Burnt-Out Case, Querry, a world-famous architect, is the victim of a terrible attack of indifference: he no longer finds meaning in art or pleasure in life. Arriving anonymously at a Congo leper village, he is diagnosed as the mental equivalent of a ‘burnt-out case’, a leper who has gone through a stage of mutilation. As he loses himself in work for the lepers his disease of mind slowly approaches a cure. Until the white community discover who he is.
contemplating wordsworth
And I have felt a presence that disturbs me
with the joy of elevated thoughts;
a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things
Wordsworth, from Tintern Abbey
forbes: highest earning authors
According to Forbes, 1 in every 17 novels sold in the US is written by this man, making him the highest paid author in the world.
James Patterson writes about eight books a year. He works with a team of collaborators on everything from children’s books to thrillers and makes his publisher, The Hachette Book Group, about a half billion dollars a year.
Even though he only pocketed a measly $70m over the last six months, this is more than enough to bump him to the top of Forbes Highest Earning Authors list.
Patterson is a former copywriter and says he works on his novels seven days a week, starting every day at around 5.30am and writing everything in longhand.
“I’m certainly not a world-class stylist. But the storytelling is pretty cool, and the narrative power of the stuff is usually pretty strong,” he told the Guardian two years ago. “These books are entertainments. It’s a very different process than if you’re trying to write Moby-Dick, or The Corrections. That’s painful. That’s different from very simple, plot-oriented storytelling. If I was writing serious fiction, I’d want more rest time.”
The last time Forbes published the list, in 2008, JK Rowling was on top having earned $300 million. The Harry Potter Authoress is now at #10 despite publishing no new novel this year.
I don’t remember where Nora Roberts fell in the 2008 roundup. But I do remember that was the first time I had ever heard of her. She’s absent from the list this year. Even though I’ve only read one of his books (The Notebook) I’ve always known about Nicholas Sparks, who chimes in this year at #9, because he’s been blogging since before blogging began, more or less, and was one of the reasons I took it up myself.
Team Edward/Jacob notwithstanding, Patterson earned almost double the amount earned by Stephenie Meyer. Meyer’s a newbie to the list but still comes in at #2, earning $40m over the period (January 1-June 1, 2010), selling 40m copies of her Twilight vampire series in the US and 100m worldwide.
The top 10 in full is:
1. James Patterson ($70m)
2. Stephenie Meyer ($40m)
3. Stephen King ($34m)
4. Danielle Steel ($32m)
5. Ken Follett ($20m)
6. Dean Koontz ($18m)
7. Janet Evanovich ($16m)
8. John Grisham ($15m)
9. Nicholas Sparks ($14m)
10. JK Rowling ($10m)
the mangificent ambersons
Major Amberson had “made a fortune” in 1873, when other people were losing fortunes, and the magnificence of the Ambersons began then.
