Tag Archives: IPhone

Making the List

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k0091272Although I faithfully note new books I want to read,  I can never be number one on the library wait list.  It doesn’t help that the book is not yet listed when I log in, anxious to find it.  It doesn’t help that the library “wish list” can only include books in cataloguing.  Mostly, it doesn’t help that I forget about the book until I see another ad or review – usually weeks later.  By then, other more diligent readers have already ordered the book, and I am number 198 for the new Jeffrey Archer, or 20 for Donna Leon’s new mystery, and still holding at 14 for The Luminaries.   Is it any wonder that my electronic book bill has soared?  Sometimes, I just can’t wait.

A friend recently sent me an article from the Washington Post about the slow-reading movement and the effects of digital reading on the brain – Serious Reading Takes A Hit from Online Scanning and Skimming.  It struck me as I “skimmed” the article that library users may be promoters of this movement, sometimes forcing me to revert to digital text that may be eroding what is left of my brain.  Michael Rosenwald writes in the Post:

Before the Internet, the brain read mostly in linear ways — one page led to the next page, and so on… Reading in print even gave us a remarkable ability to remember where key information was in a book simply by the layout…We’d know a protagonist died on the page with the two long paragraphs after the page with all that dialogue.

The Internet is different. With so much information, hyperlinked text, videos alongside words and interactivity everywhere, our brains form shortcuts to deal with it all — scanning, searching for key words, scrolling up and down quickly. This is nonlinear reading…

Will we become Twitter brains?”

I worry that books will disappear – like bookstores.  I happily still prefer holding the pages and flipping back to remember who died – harder to do on an e-book, even with those red bookmarks.  But when the wait is long, and the price is right, those electronic books fill my need every time.   How about you?

 

 

 

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Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

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9781250028655_p0_v4_s260x420Say the name Zelda and clearly, the reference is to the legendary wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald. In Theresa Anne Fowler’s Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, Zelda tells the story in her own voice – at times, reading like an illicit look into her private diary.

The highs and lows of this Jazz Age marriage have been chronicled in fiction, movies, biographies – some accusing Zelda of destroying her husband’s career, others pointing to Scott as the alcoholic womanizer who drove her insane. Fowler is on Zelda’s side.

Her fictionalized version of this dysfunctional yet brilliant pair includes relationships with a star cast of writers and artists of that era – Thornton Wilder, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, and, of course, Hemingway. Fowler uses the strange love/hate friendship of Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald as a turning point in her novel, and creates an explanation for Hemingway’s intense dislike of Zelda with Zelda’s sexual rejection of Hemingway – plausible but only fictional.

The first half of the book seemed to last forever and I found it hard to concentrate on the Southern Belle drivel, as Zelda grows from a 17-year-old Scarlett to a bobbed flapper, partying in Europe. After Hemingway enters, the pace improves, racing to the inevitable ending. To be fair, my lackadaisical attention may have been due to my dizzying ear infection, the small print on my iPhone – or maybe the disappointing use of language.

The Jazz Age with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda continues to be romanticized – a new movie version of Gatsby with Leo DiCaprio is being released, and the New Yorker recently published a Fitzgerald short story rejected over 75 years ago. Fowler’s rendition highlights Zelda’s accomplishments as a painter, would-be ballerina, and as a writer, who was actually plagiarized by her husband. Although fiction, the story certainly justifies the PBS conclusion that

“As an icon of the Jazz Age, she struggled against her traditional southern upbringing and its societal constraints to create a new, independent identity…”

If you don’t know the story of this famous pair, Z is an easy entry into their lives and worth the read, but lower your expectations if you are expecting Fitzgerald’s prose. Although Fitzgerald never wrote a roman à clef, characters from some of his work – The Beautiful and the Damned; Tender is the Night – reflect his life with Zelda. The New York Times reviewer Penelope Green calls his language “precise and a delight.” Maybe that’s what was missing in Fowler’s interpretation.

Advice for Graduates

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The May, 2010 cover of The New Yorker had a graduate hanging his degree (Ph.D.) in his old room back home, with his parents looking on.  Not much has changed in two years – even for undergraduates, with the unemployment rate for those with a bachelor’s degree at 4 percent.  Graduation speeches haven’t changed much either; Richard Perez-Pena in his article for the New York Times suggests they are following a standard template, including well-worn references to:

  • Do what moves you.
  • Much in the world needs fixing.
  • Have a little humility.
  • Be willing to make mistakes.
  • You can make the world better.

Many of this year’s graduation speakers hail from the media, rather than the august halls of academic learning.  A few used humor – maybe that’s the best way to face the world.

From Adam Samberg of Saturday Night Live fame for Harvard grads…

“The following majors are apparently useless…history, literature, all things related to art, social studies, East Asian studies, pretty much anything that ends with studies, Romance languages, and, finally, folklore and mythology.  Unless, you can somehow turn them into an iPhone app…”

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The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus

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In addition to Clement Moore’s “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” my favorite Christmas poem is “The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus” by Ogden Nash.    Enjoy –  and “you better watch out”  this Christmas Eve – “Santa Claus is coming to town.”

In Baltimore there lived a boy.

He wasn’t anybody’s joy.

Although his name was Jabez Dawes,

His character was full of flaws.

In school he never led his classes,

He hid old ladies’ reading glasses,

His mouth was open when he chewed,

And elbows to the table glued.

He stole the milk of hungry kittens,

And walked through doors marked NO ADMITTANCE.

He said he acted thus because

There wasn’t any Santa Claus.

Another trick that tickled Jabez

Was crying ‘Boo’ at little babies.

He brushed his teeth, they said in town,

Sideways instead of up and down.

Yet people pardoned every sin,

And viewed his antics with a grin,

Till they were told by Jabez Dawes,
’

There isn’t any Santa Claus!’

Deploring how he did behave,

His parents swiftly sought their grave.

They hurried through the portals pearly,

And Jabez left the funeral early.

Like whooping cough, from child to child,

He sped to spread the rumor wild:

‘Sure as my name is Jabez Dawes

There isn’t any Santa Claus!

‘
Slunk like a weasel of a marten

Through nursery and kindergarten,

Whispering low to every tot,

‘There isn’t any, no there’s not!’

The children wept all Christmas eve

And Jabez chortled up his sleeve.

No infant dared hang up his stocking

For fear of Jabez’ ribald mocking.

He sprawled on his untidy bed,

Fresh malice dancing in his head,

When presently with scalp-a-tingling,

Jabez heard a distant jingling;

He heard the crunch of sleigh and hoof

Crisply alighting on the roof.

What good to rise and bar the door?

A shower of soot was on the floor.

What was beheld by Jabez Dawes?

The fireplace full of Santa Claus!

Then Jabez fell upon his knees

With cries of ‘Don’t,’ and ‘Pretty Please.

‘
He howled, ‘I don’t know where you read it,

But anyhow, I never said it!

‘
’Jabez’ replied the angry saint,

‘It isn’t I, it’s you that ain’t.

 

Although there is a Santa Claus,

There isn’t any Jabez Dawes!’

Said Jabez then with impudent vim,

‘Oh, yes there is, and I am him!

Your magic don’t scare me, it doesn’t’

And suddenly he found he wasn’t!

From grimy feet to grimy locks,

Jabez became a Jack-in-the-box,

An ugly toy with springs unsprung,

Forever sticking out his tongue.

The neighbors heard his mournful squeal;

They searched for him, but not with zeal.

No trace was found of Jabez Dawes,

Which led to thunderous applause,

And people drank a loving cup

And went and hung their stockings up.

All you who sneer at Santa Claus,

Beware the fate of Jabez Dawes,

The saucy boy who mocked the saint.

    Donner and Blitzen licked off his paint.


Calendars – Paper or Electronic?

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In one of my whirlwind attempts to eliminate clutter, my collection of annual pocket calendars came into my sights.  I save them like diaries, recording my daily appointments – some mundane, some eventful with editorial notes – and they sit quietly in a drawer, silently keeping the vigil of the past – to be discovered every now and then, and reread with nostalgia.  But my collection mysteriously stopped a year ago.  Had I committed everything to memory, trusting my scattered brain to alert me to places I needed to be?  Unlikely.  The gap in history started the day my iPhone took over with electronic finesse.

Pamela Paul addresses the paper calendar in her article A Paper Calendar? Hey, It’s 2011  – when she left hers at her office, and felt lost for direction – not possible if she had converted to “iPhone, Google Calendar, Outlook or any number of other electronic personal-information management systems” that can be shared, synced, updated – deleted.

Not everyone has gone over to the technology trackers.  The editor of the Paris Review still uses the New Yorker’s desk diary to note appointments, and I have a colleague who looks forward to his every year, with the daily cartoons on each page  – a good way to keep work bearable and home separate; he never syncs.  The family’s dentist appointments and softball games are scrawled on the free bank calendar on his home refrigerator – somehow, he makes all his commitments.

While efficient, the iPhone calendar does not invite those pre or post comments I made that sealed an event’s place in history.  Thankfully, only a little time has been lost – maybe I can make it up – back to recording my memories in a little appointment book while I can still remember.  I saw the 2012 weekly planners on sale today, and the calendar starts now in August, 2011.

What do you use – plastic or paper?

Related Post: Anne Tyler and Appointments