Bloggiversary? I missed my first one entirely, due to technical difficulties. September 13 was the one-year birthday of this blog, and I couldn’t even post. (Computer in the shop. Needed new hard drive...again. What can I say?) The year went by very quickly. Now already again there are bouquets of asters and goldenrod by the roadsides, and once more the ash leaves are turning that rich, plummy color. The wheel has come full turn.
The good news is that, without the distraction of e-mail and blogging, I got a lot more reading done in the last few days. FLICKA’S FRIEND: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY O’HARA was a surprising look into the life of the author of one of my favorite books, one I knew, even as a young girl reading it, was an adult novel and not the young people’s horse story the adults around me took for granted it was. THE GOOD SOLDIER, by Ford Madox Ford, moved along at a good clip, despite the depressing content. Not a military story (as the title might suggest) but an account of deceit, intrigue, adultery and all usual meaningless hysteria that accompanies people with too much money and not enough to do, Ford’s novel has a fascinating structure, the truth revealed one horrible surprise at a time by a hapless narrator doomed to finish last.
I may not read every word of FAMOUS WRITERS COURSE: FICTION WRITING, VOLUME THREE, but it’s interesting and definitely worth skimming, as I resolve this week to devote the first three months of 2009 to finishing a first draft of my ‘tween novel, DREAM DOG (working title). A very different kettle of fish is CAESARS OF THE WILDERNESS: MEDART CHOUART, SIEUR DE GROSELLIERS AND PIERRE ESPRIT RADISSON, 1618-1710, by Grace Lee Nute. I confess to looking up Mackinac in the index and turning first to that section. It’s early Michigan, after all, that has first claim on my interest, as I have little grasp on the history of Ontario. PREVIOUS CONVICTIONS, by A. A. Gill, has given me a long list of places I never want to visit. BETWEEN MEALS: AN APPETITE FOR PARIS, by A. J. Liebling, gift from an old friend who visited over the weekend, called up no such aversion. Far from it!
But the book I’ve been carrying from room to room and between house and shop, the one whose end is already all to close, is Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli’s DEAD DANCING WOMEN. A humorous murder mystery! How does she do it? I am reluctant to come to the last page (keep taking breaks), as the next Buzzelli novel is not due out until next summer, but Northport can look forward to a visit from her next month, when she will give a talk at Dog Ears Books on Saturday, October 11, at 2 p.m., on the topic “Murder, Mayhem, and Mischief: One Writer's Up North.”
One very sad note this weekend was the death of David Foster Wallace. Recipient of a 1997 MacArthur genius award, Wallace was perhaps best known for his Pynchonesque novel, INFINITE JEST, but my favorite of his works was an account of the Illinois State Fair in his collection of nonfiction essays titled A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING I’LL NEVER DO AGAIN. Reading that essay, you sense his deep love for the fair despite all he says making fun of it. His father, James Wallace, was one of the three professors on my philosophy dissertation committee at the University of Illinois. A friend was a classmate of David’s at Amherst. Such are the disparate threads related, some distantly, to a single life, traced out in its loss.
2 comments:
I am very curious about Flicka's Friend. I didn't know of its existence. I read all her novels as a teen, and more recently stumbled upon Wyoming Summer, which is an autobiographical novel about her writing of music (before she wrote books). It was lovely.
This autobiography was a surprise to me, too. Tells of her childhood and parents, first marriage (against her father's will), which turned out to be a disaster, due to complete physical incompatibility. She seemed to have an outright physical aversion to her husband but kept trying to reconcile herself to what she thought must simply be a typical "happy marriage." The second marriage was a love match and lasted for many years. They lived on her income, apparently, though he did venture into sheep ranching, which is the explanation behind the move to Wyoming.
She says she learned how to write in Hollywood. She began--if I remember correctly--editing, moved into continuity, and finally began writing her own scripts. When her second marriage ended in divorce (husband conducting flagrant public affair), she moved to New York. She had managed to crack the short story market there and was advised to write a novel. MY FRIEND FLICKA started as a short story, and in a year she had written the novel, treating each chapter as a short story.
I would have imagined her whole life in Wyoming. The well-to-do background, Hollywood years, and New York setting were all surprises, as were the interesting and oh-so-different marriages. LOTS in general about writing in the book. Oh, yes, she did write music, including a complete stage musical set in the West. All that is recounted in detail.
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