In Gratitude

Jenny Diski died April 28, 2016.  When told of her impending demise she made jokes. In 2014 she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She felt:

"Embarrassment at first, to the exclusion of all other feelings."

That September she wrote in the London Review of Books:

"Under no circumstances is anyone to say that I lost a battle with cancer, or that I bore it bravely. I am not fighting, losing, winning or bearing." 

She would end her life writing.  She had, after all, written most of her life.  She had read numerous "cancer memoirs" and asserted:

"There are no novel responses possible."

And yet, in true Diski style, she wondered whose cancer book would sell the most copies.


After the initial shock, Diski tells the story of her chaotic early life, leading her to be taken in by literary giant, Doris Lessing.   Diski had been at school with Lessing's son, Peter.  They were not close, but when Diski was expelled, he implored his mother to take her in and she was quite intelligent.

Diski was almost literally dumped on Lessing's front steps.  It was not a match made in heaven. Lessing was not in the least "motherly" and Diski was uncomfortable in this new setting.  Diski says:

"Gratitude was half of what I felt. The other half was fury and resentment..."

As a cancer patient, Diski was ideal.  She was already  anti-social, preferring to spend time in her bed or on the sofa, like some consumptive Victorian victim.  She wrote:

"I have the metabolism of a sloth."

The chemo leaves the normally slim Diski, heavy.  She fears what is going to happen her. She is honest. She is funny. She is panicked. She is a writer. She will be missed.

Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l’eau

Erik Kwakkel is a Medieval book historian.  Now there is a cool job!  The other day he posted a rather zippy discovery (though he is quick to point out that he didn't "discover" it in the "No one ever opened this book before" sense but more in the "Take a look at this sense") and we are so glad he did.

In 1692 a Dutch author identified as "A.Boogert" produced a nearly 800 page book about color.  He describes how to make watercolor paints and how make gradation in the colors.  Most people describe it as a 17th century Pantone Color Guide.  The first Pantone was published in 1963, so there was a bit of a lag.

Entitled, Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l’eau, it resides at the Bibliothèque Méjanes   in Aix-en-Provence, France. In a wonderful example of the power of digitization, anyone can see this book here.

You can follow Erik Kwakkel and find out more cool stuff about Medieval books.

How Do You Move A Library?

One book at a time.  

400 of the 690 residents of Stanton, Iowa formed a human chain for nearly two hours as they passed 3000 books from the old library to the new library building.  3000 books that were too large or delicate had already been moved.  They have another 2000 to go.

Man with a Blue Scarf

In this age of mechanical reproduction, one rarely thinks of the model in a painting. Every painter is different in their technique and their use of models. The relationship between artist and subject is an intimate and personal relationship. Being a huge fan of Lucian Freud, it was a revelation reading Man with a Blue Scarf.

Art critic Martin Gayford was an acquaintance of Freud. He had known the artist for years when he volunteered to sit for him. First and foremost, we find that Freud takes his time, generally spending a year or more with each of his sitters. It is a huge commitment for the sitter. For an art critic, it proved to be valuable in site into the mind of the painter. Rather than keeping that information to himself, Gayford reveals the connection and expounds on his time with Freud.

 

"The experience of sitting in this pool of light, being examined so closely, is a curiousone. Staring, as LF stares constantly at me, is in ordinary life a disconcerting, even threatening act."

 

In the course of almost two years, Gayford and Freud talked about art and artists, friends and family, and food and animals. They visited galleries and often dined together after the session was over. This book is an eye-popping glimpse into the painter as artist told from an unusual point of view, that of the objet.

 

 

 

 

Crapalachia

How do we like our poor people in America? We like them rich. There is this ill conceived notion that with a little pluck and some hard work, we will never be poor again. We can get over it. Wear a green ribbon on our lapel to indicate we are a survivor of poverty. Poverty, however, is complicated. It is not a disease that can be cured with two aspirin.

We don't carefully examine poverty. There is little art about poverty. Art happens in big cities, created by people with the time to make art, and championed by people with money to buy art. In America, issues are often confronted in popular culture. Today, our popular culture is riddled with wealth. There are no poor people on television. Cops, waitresses, and UPS drivers all have their own homes or live alone in huge loft apartments. The last authentic working class family on television belonged to Roseanne. For years we watched as their family robbed Peter to pay Paul. After years of struggle, Roseanne won the lottery and became rich. She can now wear her "poverty survivor" green ribbon.

Oprah was poor, but she worked hard and now she is a billionaire. Get her and emerald studded ribbon.

Anyone can grow up to be President. Look at Congress and see if you can find a single poor person. Look again and see if you can find anyone who is not a millionaire. No ribbons here.

 

The WPA documented poverty in America. Today we view the Migrant Mother as an masterpiece, beautiful and evocative of the past. It is a truly iconic image of America. Most people would recognize the photo. Many people can name its photographer, Dorothea Lange. Very few could tell you the name of the woman in the photo, Florence Thompson. There are millions of Florence Thompson's in America trying to feed their children. Like the woman in the Dorothea Lange photograph, we rarely know nor care what her name is.

46.5 million American live in poverty. They are not all stupid or lazy. They are not all illiterate or crazy. They are not all criminals or drug addicts. They are employed, many work several jobs. They are fiercely loyal to family and to home. They go to church, they go to work, they go to school, and they persevere at all costs. Where are their voices?

One place to hear them speak is in the writing of Scott McClanahan. McClanahan's Crapalachia is gracing many an independent "Best of 2013" list, and well it should. Truth be told, it should be on every award list this year. Subtitled, A Biography of a Place, Crapalachia takes the reader to McClanahan's West Virginia. A small town in a rural place, scared by coal and violence, and overflowing with love and imagination.

The young Scott McClanahan lives with his grandmother, Ruby, and her son Nathan. Nathan is grown man relegated to the life of a child. His cerebral palsy has confined him to a wheelchair, a feeding tube, and his mother's house. It doesn't stop him from trying to get his nephew to slip him a beer through his feeding tube or to help him with a personal ad. Of his grandmother McClanahan writes:

"She knew how to do all kinds of things no one else knew how to do...She knew how to make biscuits from scratch and slaughter a hawg if she had to. And she knew knew how to do things that are all forgotten now --things that people from Ohio buy because it says handmade on the tag. I looked at the quilt she was working on. The quilt wasn't a fucking symbol of anything, It was something she made to keep her children warm, Remember that. Fuck symbols."

After moving in with a friend as he tries to finish school. His friend, Bill, rails against homosexuality after catching a cousin engaged in the act and quotes Leviticus. McClanahan reminds him that such behavior tends to run in families and all this talk of the Old Testament make him sound Jewish. Then one day he sets up and email account: ourlordandsavior@hotmail and sends Bill an e-mail:

"Dear Bill:

This is the lord...I am disappointed in your recent conversion to Judaism...

P.S. Please quit skipping school so much."

Bill is a bit surprised to get an e-mail from Jesus.

 

Unlike some of his friends, McClanahan finishes school. Like may people who grew up in small towns, he left for the big city. But he comes back and he writes a biography of this place.

"I tried to remember all of the people and phantoms I had ever known and loved. I tried to make them laugh and dance, move and dream, love and see...but I couldn't."

It is cliché to say a book is a roller coaster ride. Crapalachia is big old Tilt-A-Whirl of a book, spinning you one way, then the other. It leaves you dizzy and exhilarated and a bit nauseous and wondrously happy. Crapalachia is funny. At times you will laugh out loud. Crapalachia is painful. So painful that at times you will want to stop reading. Don't. Keep reading. Read everything Scott McClanahan writes.

 

A Long Day at the End of the World

A while back, I became a bit disinterested in fiction.  It just seemed to me that real life was far more interesting.  Case in point -- A Long Day at the End of the World.  Brent Hendricks' memoir reads like the most exquisite piece of fiction.  If fact, his story is so downright preposterous that one might think it was fiction.  News reports prove the truth and noting but the truth; what there is of the truth, anyway.

Hendricks tells the story of the Tri-State Crematory.   Back in 2002, hundreds of abandoned and decayed corpses were discovered in a small town in Georgia.  It was the the largest mass desecration of remains in modern American history.  There were 339 bodies resting in various states of disarray around the Tri-State Crematory.  When the investigation concluded only 226 of the bodies were identified.

Brent Marsh had taken over the family business.  He plead guilty and is serving 12 years.  The guilty plea offered no explanation into why Marsh cremated some of the remains and simply dumped others.

One of the bodies dumped was Brent Hendricks' father.  He had been dead for many years when he was sent to the Tri-State Crematory.  Hendricks' mother wanted her husband's body disinterred from his burial plot and cremated.  Her children went along with the plan and five years later, found that the cremains sitting on their mother's mantel were not their father, but bits of cement and animal bone.

Hendricks heads out on the back roads of the deep South to find out exactly what happened to his father.  Most reviewers call this book "Southern Gothic" but in the South were refer to it as Tuesday.  Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.   A Long Day at the End of the World is a lamentation of the bond between parents and children, a mystery with no end, a exploration of death, and a damn fine read.

In fact, R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers were so moved by the book that wrote a song, Roswell.  Give it a listen.

Christmas, Christmas Time Is Near...

...and you need books for all your friends. Who are we kidding -- you need books for yourself so don't even bother...  Here are 5  Lucindaville favorites for your holiday giving getting!

We love office supplies and pencils are a particular fetish.  Face it, you need to know how to sharpen a pencil correctly.  Here is the ultimate success story -- a guy who excels at a particular skill; in this case sharpening pencils.  He is so good that people pay him about 50 times what the pencil costs to sharpen it.  He gives demonstrations and people send him pencils to sharpen and now he has a book.  This may the best idea in the world or the ultimate tweeification of artisan skills.   But we just love this book!!

Now you just might think that a Venetian cookbook is only for those food enthusiasts out there but Polpo is also a work of publishing art.  Notice the spine.  The signatures of the book are sewn in an displayed raw.  The book look exquisitely handcrafted and will appeal to both the cook and the book collector.  I admit I was disappointed that it was no a cookbook exclusively for cooking octopus, but I got over it.

We are more than enamored of Thomas Jefferson. What girl can resist that smirk.  OK, he was seriously on the wrong side of that slave issue, but we believe that if he had been born several decades later he would have made an honest woman of Sally Hemmings.  What he did do was make her brother, James, the first French chef in America.  And you thought Julia Child introduced French cuisine to these shores. 

We love fashion!   However, in practical terms, I believe that dressing for a formal occasion is accomplished by changing out of the canvas Chuck and slipping into the leather Chucks.  Recently, while out shopping I inadvertently answered a request to "facetime" on my phone and realized that I was a dead ringer for the Unabomber.  No wonder I got my coffee so quickly... but I digress.  One of my favorite fashion icons is Diana Vreeland.  What the world needed was a really good biography of Vreeland and now we have one.

 
I used to read copious amounts of novels.  At some point I realized that fiction counld not do justice to real life.  Case in point -- Elsa Maxwell.  If you wrote a novel about a homely little spark plug of a girl who leaves a dreary middle-class life in California to become an instigator of social frenzy in New York and other points on the globe it would be rejected as totally implausible.  In real life, Elsa Maxwell dictated New York society, threw wild parties, acted in movies and fell madly in love with Maria Callas.  You can't make that up.

Bookshelves

My friend, Richard, sent me a book about bookshelves.  Richard has about as many books as I do, so it is a shared passion.  Anyone with tons of books might just be drawn to such a book.  In fact, I own several books about bookshelves.

This book, by Alex  Johnson, is chocked full of tweaked and tortured bookshelves.  It is the bookshelf as art.  Practicality has been tossed out the window.  I do admit to spending too much time trying to read the titles on some of the bookshelves instead of admiring their creativity.

Now this bookshelf I adore.  It give a literal meaning to that Anthony Powell tome,  Books Do Furnish A Room.  I am thinking of building a bookshelf chair.  On second thought perhaps a bookshelf daybed.

Now this is just flat out silly.  Take a close look.  Not a single book in the room.  Bookshelf wallpaper is an abomination.   This room screams, "I am just too stupid to read."  Tell the truth... if you walked into this room you would immediately hate this person!

As I said before, most of the bookshelves herein,  lean to the artistic and not the practical, but we do just love those arty bookcases.  Check out i suwannee for her frequent "Bookcase of the Day" posts;  a history of the posts can be found here.

B*tches In Bookstores

Hardcore rapper and bad boy extraordinaire, Kanye (it always looks like one should pronounce it Can Yee to Mee) West and his buddy Jay-Z preform this rap entitle N*ggas in Paris. I am not sure if it a slur if you misspell it and I am growing very fond of adding an "*" to slightly alter spellings like that will assuage one's damaged sensibilities. It's like watching everyone on Battlestar Galactica use the word frack for f*ck, like every eight year-old in the room doesn't know what frack means. If frack means f*ck, then isn't it just as offensive... but I digress (and did I just admit to watching Battlestar Galactica?)

Moving right along...It would seem that these two young women, Annabelle Quezada and La Shea Delaney decided to parody Kanye's ditty which is also known as the Ball so Hard song. Instead of ballin' in Paris, these girls are readin' at the Strand and tossing out any ballers who mispronounce Proust! It is a fine weekend interlude. So watch this and then grab a book or head out to your fave bookstore.

Lyrics to Bitches in Bookstores.

Read so hard librarians tryin’ ta FINE me­,
They can’t identify me,
Checked in with a pseudonym, so I guess you can say I’m Mark Twaining.
Read so hard, I’m not lazy.
Go on Goodreads, so much rated.
Fountainhead, on my just read, gave it four stars, and then changed it.
Read so hard, I’m literary.
Goosebumps series, TOO SCARY!

Animal Farm, Jane Eyre
Barnes & Nobles, Foursquare it
No TV, I read instead
Got lotsa Bills, but not bread
BURROUGHS , GOLDING, SHAKESPEARE – all dead

Read so hard, got paper cuts
On trains while you're playin’ connect the dots
All these blisters from turning pages
Read so hard, I’m seeing spots

Your Sudoku just can’t compare
Nor Angry Birds cos lookit here
My Little Birds is getting stares
(pause)
This print’s rare.

Read so hard, I memorize, The Illiad... I know lines.
Watch me spit, classic lit, epic poems that don’t rhyme.
War and Peace, piece of cake, read Tolstoy in 3 days.
Straight through, no delays.
Didn’t miss a word. Not one phrase.

Read so hard librarians tryin’ ta fineee me - That shit cray x 3
Read so hard librarians tryin’ ta fineee me – That shit cray x 3

He said Shea can we get married at the Strand
His Friday Reads are bad so he can’t have my hand
You ball so hard, OK you’re bowling
But I read so hard, I’m JK Rowling

That shit cray
Ain’t it, A? What you readin’?
AQ: DeMontaigne.
You use a Kindle? I carry spines.
Supporting bookshops like a bra, Calvin Klein.

Nerdy boy, he’s so slow
Tuesday we started Foucault
He’s still stuck on the intro? He’s a no go.
It’s sad I had to kick him out my house though –
He Mispronounced an author - MARCEL PROUST

Don’t read in the dark
I highlight with markers
While laying in the park
And wearing Warby Parkers
Marriage Plot broke my heart
And it made me read Barthes
I special ordered a
A softcover not hard- HUAH?AHEHA?!

Read so hard libraries tryin’ ta fine me x 2

I am now marking my place
Don’t wanna crease on my page
Don’t let me forget this page
Don’t let me forget this page
I may forget where I left off so I’ll use this little post it…
I hope it doesn’t fall out, I hope that it stays stickie…

I am now marking my place
Don’t wanna crease on my page
Don’t let me forget this page
I got bookmarks at home
But I forgot one for the road
AQ: I got a bookmark I can loan
La Shea: Know how many bookmarks I own?

I am now bookmarking my page x3
DON’T LET ME FORGET THIS PAGE -age-age-age-age-age.

Tweet, Tweet

I don't tweet. I don't even like to talk on a phone. I once stood behind a woman talking on her cell and here is what she said.

"I am waiting on the bus."

"The bus is coming"

"I see the bus"

"I am getting on the bus."

Thankful for me she moved to the back of the bus, still talking, and I was soon out of earshot.

This conversation begs the question: Who was listening to her? Seriously. For every lame telephone call there is someone on the other end listening.

Again I would ask, "Who is more pitiful?" the caller or the person who was listening to this woman for who knows how long. Surely that other person had something better to do.

Fortunately on Twitter, you are allowed only 140 characters.

They say some celebrities tweet two or three time a minute and millions of people wait to read them.

Here is what my tweets would be like:

"Went to the chicken house and let out the chickens."

"It snowed... again."

"Fixed the sink at the Post Office."

"Made cupcakes."

I will stop as I am sure the scintillating nature of my tweets has left you overwhelmed with emotion.

There is no way to stop Twitter, however, if you are enamored of this technology and want to excel in your 140 character endeavors, might I suggest reading Félix Fénéon's Novels In Three Lines. Fénéon was a clerk, editor, anarchist, critic and writer. His major work was recently published by the New York Review of Books.

Félix Fénéon was employed by the Paris daily, Le Matin to write faits-divers, "sundry events" as Luc Sante translates it. they were a kind of newspaper filler. When these "fillers' were published they were entitled Nouvelles en trois lignes. It has been translated as novels in three lines, but more correctly it could be titled the news in three lines.

However one translates, it is a must read for the Twitter user out there as Fénéon does, in fact, create novels in three line. More importantly, he creates novels in under 140 characters. Here are a few examples:

“To die like Joan of Arc!” cried Terbaud from the top of a pyre made of his furniture. The firemen of Saint-Ouen stifled his ambition.

Scheid, of Dunkirk, fired three times at his wife. Since he missed every shot, he decided to aim at his mother-in-law, and connected.

During a scuffle in Grenoble, three demonstrators were arrested by the brigade, who were hissed by the crowd.

Sand and only that was the content of two suspect packages that yesterday morning alarmed Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

There are over a thousand of Fénéon's faits-divers in Novels In Three Lines. Tweet one to a friend.

Wednesday Etiquette -- Wife Dressing

The Victoria and Albert Museum is re-issuing a 1950’s fashion gem, Wife Dressing: The Fine Art of Being A Well Dressed Wife. The book offers “provocative notes for the patient husband who pays the bills.”

The book was written by Anne Fogarty a famous model who turned designer. If you don’t know her name, you will no doubt no her most famous innovation, the Paper Doll Silhouette, which featured a full skirt over masses of petticoats.

At the very beginning, Fogarty sets the tone by telling husbands:

"If you adore her, you must adorn her. There lies the essence of a happy marriage."

She then lays out the rules married girls:

"While the bachelor girl can be a chameleon, forever changing herself over to suit a new whim, a new job, or a new beau, the wife has moved on to better things. She has found her cozy corner and man she wants to share it with. What she must do next is decide how best to dramatize her new role and crystallize her position in terms of her home, her husband, her job if she has one, her friends and business associates."

The true irony of this little book is the fact that while she very “wife” obsessed, her ideas of fashion ring true today. You have to hand it to The Victoria and Albert Museum's publishing arm. They produce some great books and often they do not get the publicity in the U. S. that they get in the U.K. If you have and interest in fashion, decorative arts, or textiles, do bookmark their bookstore. It is one of my first stops when I hit the lottery! Or utill I find that patient husband who wants to pay my bills.

Adventurers Bewares

FIRST EDITION

For those of you interested in marrying adventure, check this out, first. I know people just love this book, though I am not sure that everyone who sticks it in a photo-op has actually read it. Still, the zebra print is a must have for the busy designer looking for adventure.

Before you buy a copy of this book, you should know which one is the First Edition and which one is the book club. Since most people who buy the book are decorators, the edition doesn't really matter... unless you don't want to get totally ripped off. Recently, I have seen a half-dozen copies of this book listed for $100 or MORE and each one was listed as a First Edition. Every last one of them was a BOOK CLUB Edition and certainly not worth $100.

BOOK CLUB EDITION

When Book-of-the-Month-Club printed their edition of I Married Adventure, they needed a way to differentiate from the Lippincott printing. Since they used the same plates, BOMC chose to change the typeface of the cover. Lippincott editions have "adventure" in BLOCK type. Book of the Month Club have "adventure" in Script.

By all means, buy the book (and do read it) but what ever you do, don't pay an outrageous price for a First Edition when you are getting a common BCE.

P.S. If you want to pay $150 for a BCE, e-mail me and I'll sell you one!

Howards End Is On The Landing

I admit it. I bought this book because of the jacket and the title. Clearly, if the book were in a "plain brown wrapper" and bore the (sub)title, A Year Of Reading From Home, I might have missed it. That would have been a real shame.

It is also the reason that I have my doubts about the Kindle. It is a white slab with buttons. Sure, you can read on it, or from it, or something. But look at this jacket...you just can't help yourself. You must have it. The other big plus is... Howards End Is On The Landing is really good. Susan Hill is a novelist with a great eye for reading. The book came about when she went searching for a book she had misplaced. I was hooked. After 2 years, I am still frantically searching for my copy of The Unconscious Significance of Hair. Hey, as I have said before, the three most important things to a Southern girl are God, Family and Hair, almost never in that order!

But I digress...

any how, Hill goes looking for a book she has lost and realizes that she owns a fair number of books she hasn't read. She decides to read from her own library for a year and to buy nothing. I read that and totally hyperventilated. Susan Hill remained strong and the fruits of her labors adorn these pages. A joyful gift for those "bookie" friends and family. Screw them, buy a copy for yourself!




Hill has another profession besides being a writer, she is also a publisher. Her Long Barn Books has published two of my favorites in the past decade, Counting My Chickens by the Duchess of Devonshire and E is For Eating by Tom Parker Bowles