Happy Tuesday, Homo sapiens! It’s March and here’s my first Top 5 Tuesday of the month! Top 5 Tuesday was originally hosted by Shanah at Bionic Bookworm and now found its home with Meeghan at Meeghan Reads. Today I’m sharing five of my favorite reads during my childhood. There were a lot of books I […]
Top 5 Tuesday – Books From My Childhood — HappymessHappiness
Hello there, Homo sapiens! Love month is over… how time flies! Today I’m sharing with you the books I’ve read in February. 5-Stars 4-Stars 3-Stars How was your February reading? Did you read any good ones? Any new favorites? I’d be delighted to know so feel free to share!
February 2021 Wrap-Up — HappymessHappiness
I was intrigued when I first saw this book and I read it without any other information except that it’s about Evelyn Hugo, a Hollywood star, married seven times. But after reading it, there was so much more about Evelyn Hugo. The author introduces to us the aging Evelyn Hugo who is now finally ready […]
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid — HappymessHappiness
Work
• As a young man, Allen Ginsberg was unsure at first about doing what he wanted to do. Fortunately, he had an understanding psychotherapist who asked him what he really wanted to do with his life. Mr. Ginsberg replied that he was afraid that the psychotherapist would not think that what he wanted to do was healthy. So what did he want to do? He wanted to “never work again … and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and to go to museums and see friends.” He also wanted to have a relationship, even if the relationship were with another man. The psychotherapist listened carefully, then said, “Well, why don’t you? … If that is what you really feel would please you, what in the world is stopping you from doing it?” Mr. Ginsberg quickly met someone — Peter Orlovsky, and they had a marriage ceremony. He also found a way to stop working. He did some research and discovered that his company would save money by letting a computer do his job. The company, of course, laid him off, but they also gave him a letter saying that he had not quit the company but instead had been replaced by a computer. Mr. Ginsberg collected unemployment insurance for six months, and he worked on his poem “Howl,” which made him famous and opened up doors for him to make a living as a poet and creative guru.
• As a child, L.M. Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables, was lonely but imaginative. She named her geranium “Bonny” and even gave trees such names as “Little Syrup.” In addition, she invented imaginary friends who lived behind the two glass doors of a cabinet. Behind one glass door lived Katie Maurice, an imaginary friend of her own age. Behind the other glass door lived an older imaginary friend: Lucy Gray. Of course, as an adult Ms. Montgomery put her imagination to use writing novels and other literary works of art. When she was a teacher, she forced herself to get up and write one hour an day before teaching. She did this even in winter, when it was so cold that she had to wear a heavy coat as she wrote. Later in life, after she had achieved success, she wrote, “When people say to me, as they occasionally do, ‘Oh, how I envy you your gift, how I wish I could write as you do,’ I am inclined to wonder, with some inward amusement, how much they would have envied me on those dark, cold, winter mornings of my apprenticeship.”
• After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1938, playwright Arthur Miller had a choice to make: Either he could go to Hollywood and work for Twentieth-Century Fox for $250 a week, or he could go to New York and work for the Federal Theater Project for $23 a week. Because he wanted to do serious and important writing, he chose to go to New York. Of course, he became very successful both critically and financially, and his financial success bothered him. After all, his plays were about ordinary people and ordinary life, and he wanted to stay connected to ordinary people and ordinary life. Shortly after winning the Drama Critics Circle Award for All My Sons, Mr. Miller worried about staying connected to the lives he wrote about, so he walked into the New York State Employment Service office and said that he wanted to work at the first job they could find. The very next day he was working at minimum wage assembling beer box dividers. Fortunately, he quickly returned to writing plays, including his masterpiece, Death of a Salesman.
• Frank Peterson was a personal friend of librarian Malcolm Glenn Wyer. When Mr. Peterson went to New York City in the 1930s, Mr. Wyer asked him to get some radical literature to be added to the collection of the University of Nebraska Library. Mr. Peterson agreed, and he sent the library several bundles of literature. Eventually, a bundle of literature arrived with a note saying that this would be the last shipment. The police had raided a meeting of one of the radical organizations from which Mr. Peterson had been getting the literature, and he had narrowly escaped being arrested.
• When Robert Frost was a young man, his paternal grandfather offered to pay his expenses for a year as he tried to establish himself as a poet — with the understanding that after the year if he had been unsuccessful he would undertake a more normal occupation. Robert turned down the offer because he realized that it would take much more than a year to establish himself as a poet. Grandfather Frost did, however, leave Robert money in his will — money that Robert lived on until he became successful.
• Children’s book author Joyce Carol Thomas writes a draft, then adds to it and creates another draft, then adds to that draft and creates yet another draft, and so on. One day, she sent a draft of an essay to her editor, and her editor simply said to the assistant editor, “Put that draft in a drawer. There are more coming.” The statement was true. Ms. Thomas sent three more drafts. According to her editor, “This is the way a real writer works.”
• Randy Pausch, professor of Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon University, and author of The Last Lecture, got tenure early because he paid attention to what was important. If you ask him how he got tenure so early, he says, “Call me at my office at 10 o’clock on Friday night and I’ll tell you.”
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Titles
• When author Judy Blume handed in the manuscript for Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, it didn’t have a title. A typist in the publisher’s office filled in the title space with the opening line of the young people’s novel, and that became the title. Judy’s young daughter, Randy, came up with the title of another book: Freckle Juice. Randy used to play in the bathtub, making a mess with powder, shampoo, and soap — a mixture that she called, yes, freckle juice. The title for Just as Long as We’re Together came from creative problem-solving. Ms. Blume and her agent, Claire Smith, couldn’t think of a title, so they started singing old campfire songs. The title for the book comes from a line in the song “Side by Side.”
• James M. Cain gave two explanations for the title of his novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. According to one explanation, he had an arrangement that his postman would ring twice if he were bringing bills. According to the other explanation, the arrangement was that the postman would ring twice if he were bringing a rejection letter from a publisher. Mr. Cain was rejected so often that he got used to hearing the postman ring twice every day. One day, the postman rang only once, and handed Mr. Cain a letter that said his novel had been accepted for publication. Mr. Cain was so happy that he named his novel after the postman.
• When children’s author Jane Yolen and her family moved to a farm in western Massachusetts, she wanted to name it Fe-Fi-Fo-Farm, but her husband vetoed the idea, and they called it Phoenix Farm instead. However, their children had a wonderful idea: They wanted her to write about a giants’ farm. She did, and Tomie de Paola illustrated the book — which was titled, of course, The Giants’ Farm.
Travel
• Children’s book author Jean Fritz works hard to write at least one book per year, but she also takes three weeks off each winter to go to a Caribbean island called Virgin Gorda. Of course, this often necessitates leaving an unfinished manuscript at her home. Because she worries about such tragedies as her house burning down while she is on vacation, she places her unfinished manuscript in the very safest place that she can think of — her refrigerator.
• When Yoshiko Uchida, author of Journey to Topaz, was a little girl, she and her family sailed to Japan to visit relatives. Unfortunately, almost everyone in her family, including herself, got seasick, and so it was several days before they ventured out of their cabin to eat with the other passengers. The waiters who served their tables were so happy to have a full table of people to wait on that they applauded.
Work
• Studs Terkel knows his history, and he uses it in arguments. Because he lives in Chicago, he never learned how to drive; after all, buses go everywhere he needs to go in Chicago. At the bus stop one day, he saw a middle-class couple: a man and a woman. She was beautiful, wore Neiman-Marcus clothing, and carried Vanity Fair. He wore Gucci shoes and had a copy of The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Terkel talks to all kinds of people, and he spoke to this couple. He said to them, “Tomorrow is Labor Day: the holiday to ‘honor the unions.’” This couple’s attitude toward what he says showed that they don’t like unions. Mr. Terkel asked, “How many hours do you work a day?” The man replied that he works eight hours per day. Mr. Terkel asked, “How come you don’t work 18 hours a day, like your great-grandparents?” The man didn’t know his history, so he couldn’t answer the question. Mr. Terkel does know his history, and he answered his own question: “Because four men got hanged for you.” Mr. Terkel told the man that he is referring to the 1886 Haymarket Affair, in which four men ended up being hung. Mr. Terkel then asked, “’How many days a week do you work?” The man’s answer is five days a week. Mr. Terkel said, “Five — oh, really? How come you don’t work six and a half?” The man didn’t know his history, so he couldn’t answer the question. Mr. Terkel does know his history, and he answered his own question: “’Because of the Memorial Day Massacre. These battles were fought, all for you.” He then informed the man about the 1937 massacre of workers in Chicago. The bus came then, and the history lesson ended — much to the couple’s relief.
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Sex
• Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho experimented with sex when he was a young man. He had been in mental hospitals, in part because his mother thought that he had sexual problems. This made him think that he might be gay, so he had gay sex three times. The first time that he had gay sex, he was nervous and he did not enjoy it. Thinking that perhaps being nervous had made him not enjoy the experience, he had gay sex a second time. This time he was not nervous, but he still did not enjoy the experience. “Third time lucky,” he thought, and so he tried gay sex again, and he still did not enjoy the experience, so he realized that he was not gay and started pursuing women.
• When ballerina Allegra Kent decided to write her life story, at first she thought of getting the help of a professional writer. This did not work out. When the professional writer met Allegra’s husband, whom she had divorced and who had had many affairs, the professional writer asked him, “What is the state of your pr*ck?” She also asked Allegra, “By the way, have you ever slept with anyone famous?” (Allegra disappointed her by answering, “I don’t think so.”)
• Georges Simenon, creator of the detective Maigret, was a man of big statistics. For example, he wrote approximately 400 works of fiction and he sold over 500 million copies of his books. These facts are verifiable. What is not verifiable is his claim to have had sex with 10,000 women. His second wife did not believe that particular figure — she thought that he had had sex with “no more than 1,200” women.
Shakespeare
• Many people, including playwright Tom Stoppard, were put off by Shakespeare early in their lives. Timesjournalist Benedict Nightingale asked Mr. Stoppard about his first experience of Shakespeare: watching Laurence Olivier in the movie Hamlet. Mr. Stoppard replied, “It bored me sh*tless.” Fortunately, he overcame his aversion to Shakespeare and wrote both the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and the movie Shakespeare in Love.
• As a little girl, Emma Lazarus was taught at school by a tutor who introduced her to the works of William Shakespeare. Unfortunately, Ms. Lazarus’ parents felt that Shakespeare’s plays were not appropriate for their daughter because they were violent and sexual. Therefore, the tutor was fired. Later, when Ms. Lazarus was a young woman, Ralph Waldo Emerson recommended that she make a close study of Shakespeare.
Television
• In 2007, Paul Schrader wrote and directed the movie The Walker, which starred Woody Harrelson, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Lauren Bacall, whose character had many good lines that Mr. Schrader had collected for years. Someone asked Mr. Schrader if he were interested in writing a TV series that would star this particular character; however, he responded, “Look, it took me years to collect all those funny lines; you expect me to write a show every week? I’m not that good.”
• John Waters, aka the Prince of Puke, both writes and directs his films, which tend to be cult favorites. He once appeared on TV’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous in the 1990s, but he was amazed that the episode ever appeared on TV. He says that during the episode, “I would point to stuff in my house and say things like ‘I found this in the trash,’ ‘This cost a nickel,’ or ‘I stole it.’”
• When Don Adams was approached to star as Maxwell Smart in the TV series Get Smart, he asked who wrote the script for the pilot episode. On hearing the answer — comedy geniuses Mel Brooks and Buck Henry — he said, “Ok, I’ll do it.”
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Revenge
• African-American writer Walter Dean Myers once was shipped to the Arctic because he was a member of a basketball team. While in the United States Army, Mr. Myers had starred on a very good intramural team. During a tournament, Mr. Myers’ colonel bragged about how good the team was, and he bet quite a lot of money that the team would win. Unfortunately, the team lost the championship game and to get revenge, the colonel shipped the losing players to bases in the Arctic. In Mr. Myers’ case, however, the attempt at revenge backfired. Mr. Myers loved the Arctic and said it was “fantastic.” Later, Mr. Myers became an award-winning author of such children’s books as Hoops.
• A couple of screenplay writers rented a house with the proviso that the landlord would redecorate the house. Time passed, and it became apparent that the landlord was not going to keep his promise. Therefore, the writers saw a lawyer, who drew up an agreement in which the landlord allowed the writers to redecorate the house any way they liked as long as they paid for the redecorating. Just before the writers moved out of the house, they painted every wall, every ceiling, and every floor — black.
Satire
• After William F. Buckley, Jr., wrote a memoir titled Overdrive, University of Chicago student David Brooks satirized him for the college newspaper. Because Mr. Buckley was widely important and knew everybody and had an ego, Mr. Brooks wrote that Mr. Buckley had written three volumes of memoirs before he had begun to talk: 1) The World Before Buckley “traced the history of the world prior to his conception,” 2) The Seeds of Utopia “outlined his effect on world events during the nine months of his gestation,” and 3) The Glorious Dawn“described the profound ramifications of his birth on the social order.” And so the satire continued, including Mr. Buckley becoming popular at school because he could turn water into wine. Soon afterward, Mr. Buckley gave a lecture at the University of Chicago, and at the end of the lecture he said, “David Brooks, if you’re in the audience, I’d like to offer you a job.” This was, of course, Mr. Brooks’ big break, and he ended up working at Mr. Buckley’s conservative magazine The National Review, where he learned much about writing from Mr. Buckley, who would often cover Mr. Brooks’ short editorials with red ink, and who would occasionally write on an egregiously bad piece of writing, “Come on, David!”
• Good satire often appears where you don’t expect it, and why not — satirists are highly intelligent people who sense opportunities that ordinary people don’t recognize. For example, many odd items appear for sale at <amazon.com>, including skinned rabbit carcasses. Immediately, satirists started writing customer comments: “Nothing says ‘EAT ME’ like a picture of a skinned rabbit carcass!” and “I bought this thinking it would make a wonderful gift for my neighbor’s young son. Ordering was simple, and delivery was flawless. So you can imagine the shock and awe not only on my face, but also my neighbor’s three-year-old son, when he opened the package to find a DEAD rabbit.” The <amazon.com> page selling uranium ore provoked this comment: “My wife and I purchased this product for the express purpose of breeding an atomic superman. After a daily regimen of ingesting a tablespoon of this powder mixed with green tea along with her prenatal vitamins, my wife developed serious morning sickness and perished during childbirth.”
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Research
• Oral historian Studs Terkel may have been the world’s greatest interviewer, but he was inept when it comes to mechanical things such as making sure that a tape recorder is turned on. One day, he was interviewing an African-American woman with three kids, all of whom were living in public housing. She asked him, “’Have you noticed that machine is not working?” He had pushed the wrong button. She pushed the right button, and the tape recorder began to work. Mr. Terkel said, “From that point on, she became not only my equal but my better. And that is important, because when you are interviewing a person, that person must count.” The African-American woman spoke eloquently about her life. After the interview, her children wanted to hear her voice on the tape, so he played the tape. Mr. Terkel said, “She’d given the most eloquent account you could imagine of her life: a black person’s outing in a white world. It was so moving. When it finished, there was a pause. She said: ‘My God — I never knew I felt that way.’” Mr. Terkel added about himself, “It can help to be inept.”
• David Grazian wrote a book about Philadelphia’s nightlife titled On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife, partly because as a sociologist, he knew that the cities that have been most studied — New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas — are not like other American cities. Mr. Grazian was able to do research by interviewing people partly because he looks like an everyman and not competition or a wolf. He asks, “Can you think up a worse pickup line than ‘Hey, I’m a sociologist … mind if I study you?’” Mr. Grazian says that only one woman ever fell for that line “and I married her.” One thing that Mr. Grazian discovered in his research was that nightlife provokes anxiety: “Shrinking violets and 40-year-old virgins, sure, they were scared. But also the popular kids and the beautiful people — especially the popular kids and the beautiful people. I sometimes think we’d all just be better off dressing down, and stop trying so hard to be hip. Having fun should be way more fun than this.”
• The Brothers Grimm — Jacob and Wilhelm — researched fairy tales. In addition to perusing old books, they also perused old people. Often, they would barter for fairy tales. For example, Katharina Dorothea Viehmann was rewarded for her fairy tales with rolls and butter, while the elderly soldier Johann Friedrich Krause was rewarded for his fairy tales with some of the Grimm brothers’ old pants. By the way, mistakes did creep into some of the stories. For example, the story of Cinderella originally was a French story titled “The Little Fur Slipper.” However, the French word vair (fur) is similar to the French word verre (glass) and so the little fur slipper somehow became a little glass slipper.
Revenge
• Addison Mizner once entered polite society in New York, but he was worried when his younger brother Wilson showed up, fearing that he would mess up his chance to hobnob with the snobs. Therefore, he warned Wilson that he would pretend not to know him if they should ever meet. Wilson, of course, resented this bit of news, and he planned to get revenge. He learned that Addison and some of his society friends would be in a box at the National Horse Show, so he showed up, too. Addison pretended not to notice him, but Wilson loudly called to him. When Wilson came over to the society people’s box, Addison stiffly asked him when he was staying. Wilson replied, “I’m in a cathouse at Broadway and Forty-second Street. I just sit there all day reading my beloved books and smoking opium.”
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Rejections
• Marjane Satrapi, the author of the graphic memoir Persepolis, which became an Oscar-nominated animated film, has sold over a million copies of that book, but even she had to deal with rejection. Early in her career, before creating Persepolis, she showed a graphic manuscript to a French publishing company’s art director who rejected it because “you don’t have any style — it goes in all different directions.” Ms. Satrapi says, “I came home depressed and cried for a whole week.” But a couple of years after the successful Persepolis was published and had won awards, she was invited to show this same art director a manuscript, so she showed him the same manuscript that he had earlier rejected. This time he said, “What courage! You have tried all these different styles!” Ms. Satrapi explains what happened: “I said that’s not what you told me three years ago. And he said, ‘Did I see you three years ago?’ And I said, ‘You don’t have a very good memory, but I do.’ We ended up working together. I’m not a revenger kind of person.”
• Madeleine L’Engle Camp wrote many books from 1950 to 1959; unfortunately, only one of her books was published. When she turned 40, she received yet another rejection letter, and she cried and resolved never again to write. As she was crying, she came up with a good idea to write about, sat down at her typewriter, and started writing, having resolved to keep on writing even if she never got another book published. Later, Madeleine L’Engle became the best-selling author of A Wrinkle in Time.
• When Ursula K. Kroeber was eleven years old, she wrote a science fiction story and mailed it to Amazing Stories. Unfortunately, the editors of the magazine rejected her story and mailed it back to her. Young Ursula’s brother worried that she would be upset by the rejection; instead, she was thrilled to receive a real rejection letter, just like adult writers received. As an adult, she married Charles Le Guin, and as Ursula K. Le Guin, she wrote such books as The Lathe of Heaven and A Wizard of Earthsea.
Religion
• In 2007, author Christopher Hitchens had some interesting experiences as he toured to publicize his best-selling book God Is Not Great. In New York, he saw this sign put up by the Second Presbyterian Church: “Christopher Hitchens doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” In Raleigh, North Carolina, he appeared before a huge crowd at a Unitarian church, whose rector whispered to him, “I ought not to say this, but the church has never been this full before.” And in Austin, Texas, an audience member asked him if he knew the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, another anti-Christian author. Mr. Hitchens replied that he did, although he did not always agree with Nietzsche. The audience then asked if Mr. Hitchens was aware that Nietzsche was suffering from terminal syphilis while writing his anti-Christian works. Mr. Hitchens replied that he had heard that, but that he didn’t know whether it was true. Finally, the audience member asked if the same explanation accounted for Mr. Hitchens’ own anti-Christian works. Mr. Hitchens immediately thought, “Should have seen that coming.”
• G.K. Chesterton was a Catholic, and his Father Brown mystery stories were filled with his ideas on religion. In one story, a doctor says, “I’m afraid I’m a practical man, and I don’t bother much about religion and philosophy.” Father Brown replies, “You’ll never be a practical man ’til you do.”
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Public Speaking
• At age 13, Mikita Brittman, author of The Solitary Vice: Against Reading, took part in a school debate in which students portrayed famous people trapped in a hot-air balloon from which gas was leaking. One of the passengers had to be overthrown overboard in order to save the other passengers, and each of the passengers had to make the case that he or she was so important that someone else should be thrown overboard. Mikita, of course, being good with words, was able to convince the other children that her character — Bela Lugosi, star of Dracula — was so important that one of the other characters ought to be thrown overboard instead of Mr. Lugosi. Those other characters included Winston Churchill, King Henry VIII, and Margaret Thatcher.
• The writer J.I.C. Clarke once introduced Mark Twain and very highly praised the stories Mr. Twain had set in Yuba Dam, saying that they were the best things Mr. Twain had ever written. Mr. Twain then stood up and enthusiastically praised a German girl for 10 minutes — to no point, it seemed. Finally, Mr. Twain said, “Gentlemen, I suppose you are wondering what my story of that German girl has to do with Mr. Clarke’s speech and his reference to Yuba Dam. Well, nothing at all, and that’s just it. I never wrote about Yuba Dam. Mr. Clarke is thinking of Bret Harte.” Everyone, including an embarrassed Mr. Clarke, laughed, then Mr. Twain and Mr. Clarke shook hands.
• Lesbian author Gail Sausser occasionally used to be invited to go into classrooms and talk, then answer questions about her life and sexuality. At such times, she behaved with excellent etiquette and grace, even when facing teachers and students who thought she was going to hell. Ms. Sausser says that she was following the advice of her Aunt Pansy, a southern lady, who told her, “If you remain charming, you make your opponent look like an *sshole.”
• G.K. Chesterton was a huge man. Once, while lecturing in America, he heard a gasp at his enormous size as he rose to walk to the podium. Standing behind the amplifier, he told his audience, “At the outset I want to reassure you I am not this size, really — dear no, I’m being amplified.”
Publishers
• In 2007, Fantagraphics published an 878-page book titled Laura Warholic: or The Sexual Intellectual, which is the first novel written by Alexander Theroux in 20 years. Of course, Fantagraphics usually publishes comic books and graphic novels, not envelope-pushing novels, but Mr. Theroux had published two monographs with Fantagraphics: The Enigma of Al Capp and The Strange Case of Edward Gorey. Because Fantagraphics was the only publisher willing to publish such a long novel without excessive editorial meddling, Mr. Theroux was happy to have Fantagraphics as the novel’s publisher. However, he does acknowledge that his pay for writing the novel is not much. According to Mr. Theroux, “For this novel I earned less than a Burger King tweenie in a paper hat. But nowhere should you compromise. You have to find plenitude in your work and redemption in your dreams.”
• When J.K. Rowling wrote her first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, her agent sent it to Bloomsbury Publishing, where an editor named Barry Cunningham wanted to publish the book. However, he needed to get the permission of the company’s directors to do so. A colleague of his, Rosemund de la Hay, came up with an idea to get the company’s directors to consider the book carefully. They enclosed a package of Smarties candy with each manuscript that they sent to the company’s directors. Because the Smarties Prize is awarded to the best children’s book published in Great Britain each year, this was a way of indicating that they thought that the book was good enough to win that prize. In fact, after the book was published, it did win the Smarties Prize.
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Buy
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