Harriet the Spy - The Movie

Well, I am sorry to report that the three best things about Harriet the Spy - the movie - are Eartha Kitt in a cotton-candy pink wig, the theme song, and oh, dear, maybe there are only two best things.

I recently discovered the book this Nickelodeon movie is based on about 11-year-old Harriet and her spy route. Harriet carries her notebook with her everywhere she goes and writes down everything she observes because she wants to become a writer and childhood is her training ground. You can read my thoughts on this classic here.

I enjoyed the book - celebrating its fiftieth year. And I will admit that the overall arc of the story in the film followed the original, but the 1996 version of Harriet loses something in the intervening decades.

To me, the casting of Harriet wasn't right. Actually, not one of the kids was very engaging or memorable. For some unknown reason, the grocery store owned by an wild Italian family that Harriet spies on in the book becomes an Oriental store in the movie. Rosie O'Donnell as Golly the Nanny plays her part with absolutely no expression or warmth and has the deadest eyes imaginable. 

The background music seemed very loud and the camera angles and shots were frenetic and dizzying. 

Sigh. Maybe if I were eleven, the movie would have appealed to me. As it is, I will stick with the book. You might want to as well.

Anyway, here is the theme song "The Secretive Life" written and performed by Jill Sobule.

Delight by J.B. Priestly

J.B. Priestly delighting in his

typewriter and pipe

It just has to be said - Delight by J.B. Priestly is a delight!

I got my hands on this book, published in 1949, through an inter-library loan. Hooray for my public library. It actually came from the shelf of the University of Louisville Ekstrom Library so it didn't have far to travel. Maybe two miles...

Anyway, Priestly, a self-professed grumbler, wrote this book with the intent of helping raise the morale of the British people after the end of World War II by giving them reasons to rejoice of life's simple pleasures. It contains 114 short essays on such delights as fountains, smoking, a gin and tonic, old photographs, charades, a walk in the pine wood. Easy enough to be delighted by any of those (except maybe the smoking!)

But digging deeper, Mr. Priestly comes up with such pleasures as: not going, suddenly doing nothing, discovering Vermeer, a first time abroad, found money, orchestras tuning up, and departing guests.

The longest essay here runs to maybe three pages; most fit on one page or two. All are written in the richest of language and with more than a twinkling of humor. If you can get your hands on a copy of this Delight, I don't think you will be disappointed.

And it may get you to thinking about some of your own delights. It certainly did me.

You will see what I mean. Here is Number Fifty-one:

There is a peculiar delight, which I can still experience though I knew it best as a boy, in cosily reading about foul weather when equally foul weather is beating hard against the windows, when one is securely poised between the wind and rain and sleet outside and the wind and rain and sleet that leap from the page into the mind. The old romancers must have been aware of this odd little bonus of pleasure for the reader, and probably that is why so many of their narratives, to give them a friendly start, began with solitary horsemen, cloaked to the eyebrows, riding through the night on urgent business for the Duke, sustained by nothing more than an occasional and dubious ragout or pasty and a gulp or two of sour wine (always fetched by surly innkeepers or their scowling slatterns), on side-roads deep in mire, with wind, rain, thunder-and-lightning, sleet, hail, snow, all turned on at the full. With the windows rattling away and hailstones drumming at the paper in the fireplace, snug in bed except for one cold elbow, I have travelled thousands and thousands of mucky miles with these fellows, braving the foulest nights, together crying "Bah!"

A Little Treasury of Great Poetry edited by Oscar Williams

I hate to admit it, but I am really not much of a reader of poetry. Billy Collins and Mary Oliver aside, I don't spend much time immersed in the poets of the ages.

But I am a sucker for a vintage book. When I discovered A Little Treasury of Great Poetry on the Friends of the Library sale table, I snatched it up quicker than you could say "Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright..." 

This anthology, which boldly promises to hold The Best Poems of Seven Centuries, was published in 1947. Its editor was Oscar Williams, himself a poet, although he was more well-known for his collections of others' poetry than his own.

What I like about this anthology, American and British poems ranging from Chaucer to Dylan Thomas, is that the works are divided into categories. 

So we have Poetry of the Earth, Beginnings, Spirit of Man, Mortality, Snow, Auguries of Innocence, Time, Age and others. And finally there is the delightful section of humorous ditties, Jabberwocky. 

In all there are 766 pages of long, short, narrative, and lyric poems; ballads; songs; and, passages from great plays. There is an index of authors and titles, an index of first lines, and lo, and behold, portraits of the poets. I just love looking at their faces! Only two females are featured in this gallery - Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the anthologist's wife, poet Gene Derwood.

The book is just the size to sit on my bedside table which may encourage me to pick it up and read a stanza or two before bed.

I kept thinking that Mr. Williams' name sounded familiar, so I searched my shelves and sure enough, I came across Immortal Poems of the English Language which he also gathered. It was given to me by a dear friend on my birthday (which just happens to be tomorrow - I hope there will be cake!) many years ago. To give you an idea of just how long ago, the little paperback cost seventy-five cents.

Are you reading any poetry these days?

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

"My name is Harriet M. Welsch. I used to be a spy."

Or perhaps Harriet, now 61, still is a spy and right now is sitting in a coffee shop sipping on a latte and recording in her notebook the conversation of the couple at the next table and making note of what the man at the counter is wearing.

Harriet, of course, is the creation of author and illustrator Louise Fitzhugh. When the book Harriet the Spy was published fifty years ago, Our Harriet was an 11-year-old girl living and going to school in New York City. Her father had some sort of job in television, her mother played bridge, and they both pretty much left Harriet alone to be raised by the nanny Ole Golly and the cook. 

Harriet spends her afternoons after school going along her spy route and writing down her observations. First there is Dei Santi's grocery, then Harrison Withers and his 26 cats, the Robinsons with a house full of things they like to show people, and Agatha Plumber, a woman who spends her days in bed.

Harriet lives on tomato sandwiches, egg creams, and her afternoon treat of milk and cake. She has her specific spy clothes (jeans and hooded sweatshirt), her notebook, and a tool belt holding her flashlight and extra pens.

She has two best friends: Sport, who tends to his father who spends his days and nights holed up writing the Great American Novel, and Janie, who wants to be a scientist and blow up the world. 

The life of a spy holds certain dangers. Harriet is not above writing about her friends and classmates and this is where she really gets into trouble. Her classmates find her notebook and read about themselves through the eyes of a spy. Harriet is truthful if not always complimentary in her observations. 

Ms. Fitzhugh has created an intelligent, energetic Harriet. She also gives the reader - young or old - a glimpse into different lifestyles of the adults in the story and teaches Harriet a few lessons about life.  

Harriet the Spy is another book I missed reading when I was younger. I wish I had made Harriet's acquaintance sooner. 

Hotel Pastis by Peter Mayle

I am a big fan of Peter Mayle and his 1993 Hotel Pastis, a novel of Provence, did not disappoint. It has all sorts of things going for it.

1. It takes place in London and Provence.

2. The main characters include Simon, newly divorced and fed up with his life as a London ad agency executive who gets out of the rat race and opens the high-class Hotel Pastis in a small village in Provence; Ernest, Simon's 'man' of exquisite taste who takes on planning and organizing the opening of hotel along with some help from his bulldog Mrs. Gibbons; and Nicole, Simon's love interest and partner in the hotel whom he conveniently meets on his very first visit to the village.

3. The book is filled with beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes all eating beautiful food.

4. There are amusing gentle jabs at journalists, advertising agencies, chefs, vineyard owners, workmen, artists, and corporate bigwigs.

5. There is a bank robbery gang on bicycles.

What's not to like?

While the hotel gets ready for its grand opening, along the way we meet all sorts of folks: the menacing Enrico with his 'protection' racket; The General who masterminds the bank robbery; Caroline, Simon's ex-wife who is always looking for some way to get even more alimony; William, Simon's ne'er-do-well uncle who comes to Hotel Pastis to sponge off his nephew and help himself to his cigars and liquor; and Crouch the sour British journalist who fights any changes made in the village tooth and nail and yet has a dirty little secret of his own.

There are many more, of course. Some merely stroll across the pages, champagne glass in hand, and some stay for a while. Each one will bring a smile.

This book truly swept me away to Provence. Not a bad place to be.

In Which Michael Sims takes a look at Henry David Thoreau

 Henry David Thoreau

(1854)

by Samuel Worcester Rowse

My book of the year for 2012 was The Story of Charlotte's Web: E.B. White's Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic by Michael Sims. I wrote about it here. 

I have a signed copy of the book as Mr. Sims made a stop on his book tour that year at an independent bookstore here. He was delightful to listen to as he told his tale of visiting White's farm in Maine and actually seeing the barn where Charlotte was first imagined. 

So imagine my glee to find that Mr. Sims now has written a book about Henry David Thoreau. The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond.

Just as he took a look at White's life growing up and events that inspired Charlotte's Web, Mr. Sims focuses on Thoreau's life before he became famous for his journals of life at Walden Pond. 

I have checked Mr. Sims's website in hopes that he will be traveling through my city for this book but so far no events have been planned. I will keep my fingers crossed. 

Right here, on our stage, Billy Collins

Billy Collins
Kentucky Author Forum

My second literary find on the DVD shelves of the library was an interview with American poet Billy Collins. It was actually recorded here in 2011 as one of the University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum events that have been going on since 1996. 

These interviews, which are staged about four times a year, involve a well-known author and a sometimes well-known interviewer. They are filmed before a live audience. The stage set consists of a large wooden desk, two leather chairs, a bookshelf full of books and the ubiquitous green plants. It is all quite literary and civilized.

But back to Mr. Collins. He was interviewed by the very expressive author and radio personality Garrison Keillor. I was fascinated by the contrast between the two men. There sat Mr. K, who by all accounts was having a very bad hair day, looking like a great shaggy bear. (For all I know it may have been a bear in a Garrison Keillor costume.) 

Then we had the dapper Mr. Collins, past poet laureate. I was entranced by his graceful movements and by how completely comfortable he was in front of his audience and the cameras. Such a gentleman. 

The interview consisted of short monologues in the form of questions by Mr. K followed by responses from Mr. C. He also read a couple of his poems. I loved hearing him read and am a devoted fan. 

He talked of his persona in his poems. The real Billy Collins drinks coffee. His poet persona drinks tea. They both, however, like dogs and jazz. His poems, he said, are not about past events but are an effort to create current experiences on the page.

The show ran about 60 minutes. The best news is that you can watch this interview as it is archived on the local public television station's website: KET.org. This should link you to the page with the listings of past shows. Your own public television station may broadcast these programs under the name "Great Conversations". If not, you can watch on your computer such worthies as E.L. Doctorow, Stephen Pinker, Erik Larson, Rosanne Cash, Madeleine Albright, and Margaret Atwood.

All for free; all for you. 

Because I don't own a television, I didn't realize that these programs were broadcast and I certainly didn't know that they were available on the station's website. 

A treasure trove of  literary finds indeed!