Cast of Characters by Thomas Vinciguerra

When I was growing up I often spent time with a relative who had a subscription to The New Yorker magazine. She had traveled to that metropolis many times and wanted to keep up with what was happening there. I was too young to appreciate anything in the magazine except the cartoons and the colorful covers. I didn't understand what a literary treasure trove it was.

I have come to see the error of my ways. I am especially fond of and fascinated with the early history of The New Yorker when it was lorded over by its founder Harold Ross. The first issue came out in 1925 and Mr. Ross remained the magazine's editor until his death in 1951. 

Mr. Ross and his crew - James Thurber, E.B. White, fiction editor Katharine White, theater critic Wolcott Gibbs, and others - are the shining stars in Thomas Vinciguerra's Cast of Characters. I discovered this book in the new non-fiction display at the library the other day and snatched it up. As Mr. Thurber and Mr. White are two of my favorite writers, I couldn't resist.

And it is great to find a book about the magazine that features so much information about Katharine White whose intelligence and clear thinking kept the bombastic Mr. Ross in line. (If you haven't read Onward and Upward in the Garden, a collection of her columns, I can surely recommend that you do.) 

I have only read the first two chapters of this tale and am already in thrall of the talent that came together in the editorial offices of the magazine. There is brief background information on each writer and editor and generous examples of their work - which of course is the best part - all held together by Mr. Vinciguerra's fine prose.

I am looking forward to spending the weekend in the company of this erudite, witty, and charming cast of characters. 

By the Book with Belle

This morning I read a New York Times interview with one of my favorite authors Bill Bryson. The Q&A was in the newspaper's By The Book feature (here). As you might imagine the interviewees answer questions about what they are reading, what authors have influenced them, and other bookish inquiries. Past authors have included Sue Grafton, Simon Winchester, and David McCullough plus many many more. (Where have I been that I am just now discovering this column?)

Anyway, as I have no book to report on at this minute, I thought I would interview myself based on the Bryson interview. (I hope that I am not breaking any copyright laws by doing so!)

What books are currently on your nightstand?
I am reading on my Kindle Losing Ground by Catherine Aird and I have a paperback edition of The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald that is gathering dust as it has been there for so long. 

What's the last great book you read?
Carolina Writers at Home is tremendous. A collection of essays by many authors I was not familiar with. And it has these wonderful brooding, sepia-toned photographs.

Which writers, poets, journalists working today do you admire most?
Alexander McCall Smith, Bill Bryson, Mary Oliver, Billy Collins,
Anne Fadiman, Alain de Botton, Michael Dirda, Annie Dillard.

Who are your favorite travel writers and what is your favorite travel book?
Bill Bryson certainly comes to mind. I am sure I would get along with Patrick Leigh Fermor although I have yet to get my hands on any of his books. 

Which genres do you especially enjoy reading?
Mystery, vintage children's books (because my own childhood reading was somehow neglected), the humor of Dave Barry and James Thurber. Books about books.

Which do you avoid?
Anything too violent, romance novels, science fiction, pretentious literary fiction.

What was the last book that made you cry?
The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith. Not that it was sad, but his characters are so touching.

The last book that made you laugh?
Drop Dead Healthy by A.J. Jacobs. He always makes me laugh.

The last book that made you furious?
Everyone is Entitled to My Opinion by David Brinkley. A lesson in how American political shenanigans never change.

Favorite poems?
"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver. "Forgetfulness" by Billy Collins. Together these two poems could save the world.

Your favorite movie adaption of a book?
To Kill a Mockingbird. I am also very fond of the television productions of Lark Rise to Candleford and Cranford.

Who is your favorite fictional heroine or hero?
I must say that I adore Mma Precious Ramostwe and I hope that somewhere in the world there lives a woman just like her. And of course Nancy Drew set me off to a lifetime of reading mysteries. And I mustn't leave out brave Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird.

Your favorite anti-hero or villian?
Well, I wouldn't call him a favorite, but I sure wouldn't want to meet Oliver Twist's bully Bill Sikes in a dark alley.

What kind of reader were you as a child? 
I was slow to enter the world of books. My second grade teacher sent home a note to my parents that I needed to read more for enjoyment. She would be so proud now!

What childhood books or authors stick with you most? 
The Nancy Drew mysteries and the tales of Mary Stewart and Daphne duMaurier. Also, Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink. As an adult I discovered Ms. Brink's The Pink Motel and was swept away by it.

If you had to name one book that made you what you are today, what would it be?
Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck. I read it when I was a junior in high school and it made me want to become a writer. And I did.

What author, living or dead, would you most like to meet?
I can't pick just one: E.B. White for his words, Agatha Christie for her plots, and P.G. Wodehouse for his characters.

What was the last book you put down without finishing?
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray and Little Face by Sophie Hannah. The titles both showed up recently on a list of mysteries to read but I couldn't get into either one. 

Of the books you've written, which is your favorite?
Well, unlike Mr. Bryson, I haven't written any books but as for my over 800 blog posts I would have to choose the ones about my literary adventures (The Grand Southern Literary Tours, One and Two) and my accounts of meeting various authors. 

Whom would you like to write your life story?
Bill Bryson. He would be able to take the jumble of my journals and turn them into a humorous tale.

How to Get Through the Day - Thurber-style

James Thurber
1894-1961
Photo from The Thurber House

Earlier this year I reread James Thurber's My Life and Hard Times, an autobiographical collection of humorous stories of his growing up in Columbus, Ohio. 

In Lances and Lanterns, which I am reading now and which was published in 1961, Thurber is all about Words. He loves playing with words, inventing words, using words to help him drift off to sleep. He is not amused by words used by the advertising world - "the men in the grey-flanneled minds."  He abhors Hollywood's penchant for overstatement and use of exclamation marks in movie come-ons. 

He has become a bit of a curmudgeon which makes him all the more endearing to me. And the simple drawings of his only add more insights into this wonderful writer's creativity.

Thurber takes on Henry James in "The Wings of Henry James" and the questions of an eight-year-old in "A Moment with Mandy." Together they ponder such mysteries as "Why didn't God make bats butterflies?" "Why didn't God give dogs glasses?" and "Why don't foxes wear foxgloves?"

He starts off the book with a hilarious piece called "How to Get Through the Day" in which he advises:
--Never answer a telephone that rings before breakfast.

--If you want to keep your breakfast down, do not read the front page, or any page, of the morning newspaper

--Avoid the ten o'clock news on the radio, at all costs.

--Do not open the morning mail when it arrives if you are alone in the house.

--Stay away from afternoon naps, but as for a nip before dinner, "I am all for it unless it leads to nipping that doesn't end until after three o'clock in the morning.

--Select dinner-table conversations with care to avoid the gloomy "running from the muddle-fuddle of international relations to the dangers of cholesterol."

--Don't watch television's "Westerns and police bang-bangs."

Although written in the 1950s, these seem to be good rules for our time as well.

My Life and Hard Times

I spent a couple of hours on the porch today with James Thurber reading his My Life and Hard Times ( #2 on my List of 10).  The neighbors might have wondered if I had gone a bit mad as I was laughing out loud most of the time.

The book is his autobiographical tale of growing up in Columbus, Ohio. Not your typical life. Consider the chapter titles:

The Night the Bed Fell; The Car We Had to Push; The Day the Dam Broke; The Night the Ghost Got In; More Alarms at Night; A Sequence of Servants; The Dog That Bit People; University Days; and, Draft Board Nights.

Many things seemed to befall the Thurber family at night. There was always trouble with some mechanical contraption. Electricity leaked from the wall sockets. There was chaos caused by ghosts, terror caused by a mean Airedale, and confusion at the examination hall of the Draft Board.

And all of this in 86 pages. Not a mention of drugs, abuse, violence - unless you count the time his mother threw a shoe at the neighbor's window to awaken him and plead for him to call the police as there were burglars in the house. And then this resulted in grandfather shooting one of the policemen in the shoulder but that wasn't his fault as he thought the cop was a deserter from Civil War General Meade's army.

Or so the story goes.

Thurber was born in 1894 in Columbus, Ohio. This book takes a look at his life up to 1918 - proof that a lot can happen in a mere 24 years. He went on to work for the Department of State in Washington, D.C. and was attached to the American Embassy in Paris. His journalism career started when he returned home to Columbus, took him again to Paris where he wrote for the Chicago Tribune, and finally to New York City and the New York Evening Post. By 1927, he had joined The New Yorker magazine as an editor and continued to contribute to the publication until the 1950s. He died in 1961.

My Life and Hard Times is not the only Thurber volume on my shelf. There are also Thurber's Dogs, Thurber on Crime, Let Your Mind Alone!, and Lances and Lanterns.

The man is certainly always good for a laugh.

Simple Pleasures edited by Ivo Dawnay

Here is a simple pleasure for you:

The temperature is 75 degrees and I am sitting in the black wicker chair on my front porch reading Simple Pleasures. A cool breeze whispers across my shoulders, a couple of little brown sparrows take sips from the bird bath, and a neighbor strolls across the street to catch up for a few minutes before she goes back to pulling weeds from her garden. I go back to my reading.

Not bad after weeks of dry, 100-degree days with not a whiff of air. Whew.

Since my post yesterday on my picks for National Book Lover's Day - a list of ten books from my shelves that I wouldn't want to be without - I realized that only one book is fiction. Well, one and a half if you consider James Thurber's humorous essays/stories/memories of growing up in Columbus, Ohio. He may just have taken a few literary liberties with the events of his early life, but perhaps not as many as one might think.

Anyway, I had pulled out the collection of essays, Simple Pleasures, (#5 on the list) to double check its editor and it was still sitting by my reading chair. I picked it up and was once again lost in the Little Things That Make Life Worth Living: knitting with author and knitwear designer Sally Muir; the pleasures of a good log fire with former MP Ann Widdiecombe; foraging for mushrooms with journalist and war correspondent Sam Kiley.

Perhaps my favorite this reading is being stuck on a train "in that mythic realm of the British transport system, the middle of nowhere" with novelist Gilbert Adair.  Oh, to be in England.

The essays in this diminutive book published by the British National Trust, it only measures about 5 inches by 7 inches, are broken into categories: A Sense of Place, Home and Hearth, Creature Comforts, The Great Outdoors, Pleasures of the Table, Talking and Ruminating, and Final Thoughts.

At just under 200 pages, it can be gulped down along with a lemonade on a particularly spectacular cool summer's day or taken bite by bite at your pleasure. Highly recommended either way.