Tag Archives: The New York Times

On Receiving an Impersonal Text…But I Digress…

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After reading Dominique Browning’s “I’m Too Old for This” in the New York Times Style section, I cheered.

“Take a pass on bad manners, on thoughtlessness, on unreliability, on carelessness and on all the other ways people distinguish themselves as unappealing specimens. Take a pass on your own unappealing behavior too: the pining, yearning, longing, and otherwise frittering away of valuable brainwaves that could be spent on Sudoku, or at least a jigsaw puzzle.”  (In my case, online Scrabble with the computer and Spider solitaire.)

I’m too old for this…

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Mysteries in the New York Times

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imagesWannabee mystery writers looking for inspiration will find three possibilities in the news section of this Sunday’s New York Times.  I couldn’t help wondering why the elderly man was standing at the news stand, reading the front page – until I bought the paper.

The cover story – Twist in 97-Year-Old’s Murder: His Knifing was 5 Decades Ago – tells of a man knifed near Times Square over 50 years ago who survived until the old wound “done him in”  in old age.  Would he have lived to 100, were it not for that hapless encounter?  And whodunnit?  No clues – everyone is long dead.

Alan Cowell’s article – After Long Legal Fight, Inquest Is Set to Begin in Death of Putin Critic – recounts the mysterious death of a Russian who dared to criticize.  Death by poison in his tea by spies?  Could be fodder for the next John Le Carre thriller.

And best of all, the tale of a young editor at Dell, Vivian Grant, a frequent visitor to the Ayn Rand Murray Hill salon, who died of a botched abortion – but she was never pregnant.  This story may already be taken: Joanne O’Connor lives in Grant’s former Manhattan apartment and is researching the details – including finding her cat.

Great Sunday for “truth is stranger than fiction.”

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Penelope Fitzgerald and others

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The ubiquitous Gone Girl never seems to go away.  Gillian Flynn and Cheryl Strayed (author of Wild) are paired in an article about books made into movies in this Sunday’s New York Times.  I have yet to read Wild, and may wait for Reese Witherspoon’s version, but I share Bob Odenkirk’s view from his New York Times interview in “By the Book” –

I thought “Gone Girl” pushed the unreliable-narrator gambit past the breaking point. Please don’t hit me with your copy of “Gone Girl.”

Nevertheless, I read the article and admired the two self-posessed American forty-somethings.

Still searching for inspiration, I found Stacy Schiff’s review of Penelope Fitzgerald’s biography – a new book by Hermione Lee.  Schiff, the biographer of Cleopatra (see my review here ), notes the rediscovery of an older woman who had marinated through most of her life, before producing her first novel at age 60 and winning the Man Booker Prize in 1979 when she was 63 (proving it’s never too late).   The Blue Flower, published when Fitzgerald was 78, is called her masterpiece.

9780395859971_p0_v1_s260x420Hermione Lee, Fitzgerald’s biographer, describes The Blue Flower as a “novel about youth, hope, idealism, and the imagination…

The Blue Flower imagines the families, history and ideas of late 18th-century provincial Germany, the period in which the philosopher Novalis (Fritz von Hardenberg) was a young man, just when Romanticism was emerging…a mysterious short book… Fritz’s family life, his work as a tax collector for the salt mines, his philosophical education, the story of the woman who silently loves him, his romantic passion for the naive Sophie, who dies a cruel death, and the landscape of his everyday life…his visionary dream of a blue flower that can never be found haunts the book like a half-remembered tune…

Music is very important to the novel, and it is constructed, boldly, in short scenes, like moments in a dream or songs. The blue flower keeps shifting its meaning. What is its name, Sophie asks him. “He knew it once,” Fritz replies. “He was told the name, but he has forgotten it. He would give his life to remember it”.

Fitzgerald said once that the blue flower is what you want of life. “Even if there’s no possibility of reaching it, you must never give up”.

I am on my way to pick up a copy from the library.  It sounds familiar but I don’t remember reading it.

Have you read it?

 

 

How To Survive Bus Tours When Traveling Alone

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11949851611473942866bus1_bw_jarno_vasamaa_01.svg.medTraveling solo on a packaged bus tour with a group you have never met can be a pleasurable adventure, if you …

1. Do Your Homework.
Don’t depend on the tour guide to fill in all the spaces or to know the answers to all your questions. Usually they do know where the best bathrooms are located, but most are not experts in the local culture or literature. They know enough to impress you with their knowledge, but a good grounding in travel sites – Fodor, Frommer, Rick Steves, and, of course, tripadvisor, may lead you to places you’ll enjoy and can supplement the tour.

I could never understand why tourists would arrive at a new place without preparing first. On a recent tour of England, a fellow traveler astonishingly had never heard of the Lake District and was amazed to discover that a childhood favorite was written by the local poet – Wordsworth. Later, in Bath, a dentist asked the tour guide to explain who Jane Austen is.

Exploring brings welcome surprises, but knowing a little about the area can go a long way to better enjoying the short time spent there. Download a few local maps, or ask the hotel for one of the area – those are usually better than most in the guidebooks. Make friends with the concierge. Checkout the New York Times column –  36 hours in …wherever you are.

2. Observe Your Fellow Tourists
These same people will be with you for a while – sometimes up to 3 weeks. Take your time getting to know them before you strut your stuff. It’s fun to stay incognito at first; eventually, you will know everyone’s deep secrets but better not to reveal yours. Unlike the person sitting next to you on the plane, the sad widow or haughty office clerk who despises anyone with an advanced degree will be still there after breakfast. Listen judiciously; try not to empathize; and mentally note the needy you should avoid so your trip does not become a confessional. After 10 days, everyone will be tired of each other anyway, and it will be fun to watch the dynamics of couples, while you make character notes for your next novel.

3. Find Your Grail
Whatever makes your heart sing, be it medieval castles, cathedrals full of Renaissance art, old bookstores, Shakespearean productions, bespoke clothing, or the best local food you can eat (fish and chips, ice cream cones with a Flake), plan time on your own to find it. Don’t expect your fellow travelers to emulate your pleasure; sometimes a hidden discovered treasure is best kept to yourself to savor. Some travelers worry about missing something on tour when left to their own devices, and, like kindergarteners, will try to outshout others in their determination to outdo others. Don’t fall prey to the game; quiet satisfaction is its own reward.

4. Always Have a Book
Although my iPad was crammed with best sellers and books I had saved to read, I never turned it on. New bookstores always offered a tome or two that I read along the way, and passed on to another. After a discussion of common reading interests, the helpful concierge at one hotel was a happy receiver of a bestseller I had finished and did not want to pack.

5. Enjoy Spending a Time With Yourself

No matter what waits for you on your return, traveling alone offers an opportunity to explore, think, read, eat – whatever and whenever you like – with no negotiations. Meeting new people and exploring new places is part of the fun of traveling alone, but getting to know – and enjoy – yourself, is a unique pleasure.tourist

“The man (or woman) who goes alone can start today, but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.” – Henry David Thoreau

How about you, fellow travelers, any tips to pass on?

Put the Dust Jackets Back On

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Interior designers often recommend removing the dust jackets from books before placing them on the shelves “for a more unified appearance,”  but Julie Bosman in her article for the New York Times – Selling Old-Style Books by Their Gilded Covers -writes that publishers are now counting on innovative book covers to compete with electronic books.

“If e-books are about ease and expedience, the publishers reason, then print books need to be about physical beauty and the pleasures of owning, not just reading.”

New books with attracting and unusual covers include…

      

“If the physical book, as we’ve come to call it, is to resist the challenge of the e-book, it has to look like something worth buying and worth keeping.”     Julian Barnes

One of my favorite books with one of my favorite covers – still on my shelf –