The Mechanic & the Muse

Bookmobile Nights

By my bedside, balanced in precarious stacks and columns, about 40 books  represent a rough count of ones I've read, am waiting to read, want to re-read, plus ones I started and put down, but which one day may lure me to their pages anew.

If your bedside looks anything like mine, then you'll probably derive comfort, as I did, from "Why I Can't Stop Reading Books," an essay by Joe Queenan published in today's New York Times Book Review.

In a piece brimming with nostalgia about the role of the Bookmobile, along with beckoning descriptions of bibliographic rabbit holes, it's Queenan's counter-intuitive explanation of his consumption method that most heartened me.

"Friends say that I suffer from a short attention span, but exactly the opposite is true. I do not stop reading books because I lose interest in them; if anything, I have too long an attention span, one that allows me to read dozens of books simultaneously without losing interest in any of them."

Queenan's eclectic reading list is another treat. It also raises a question, one that brings to mind the barbarians of the ubiquituous and, to some, wrongheaded Capital One ads:

"What's by your bedside?"

(1953 Bookmobile images: Harrison County, Miss. Library)

New Yorker fans

Heads-up!

Not just because it's Sunday and the magazine puts selected pieces on its website, with, sadly, a shelf life of just a week. That's important if you're too impatient to wait for the postman. Or, as in my case, you've been swallowed up by the subscription dept. and haven't seen a fresh issue in my mailbox for weeks.

While you're waiting, check out emdashes, a terrific and exceedingly generous blog by Emily Gordon, who's dedicated herself to explore where the emdash—a puncutation mark the length of the letter that serves an interstital purpose—goes, in this case, between the lines and behind the stories of The New Yorker.

emdashes is the place to go if you're wondering what the word "hirple" and other unfamiliar words mean in the Galway Kinnell poem, "Burning the Brush Pile," from the June 19 issue.

Or would appreciate the insiders account of how "Brokeback Mountain" went from an Annie Proulx NYer story to a MMP (major motion picture) and why you can't read it online.

Or, crave links to stories written by mag's regulars (or as one of our daughters at a much younger age referred to as "usuals) : Katherine Boo, Malcolm Gladwell, Rebecca Mead and others whose work reappears elsewhere online. 

Like the best blogs, emdashes is fueled by obsession. "Like me, you read The New Yorker. With interest. Loyally, actively, critically. Ardently," says Gordon, an editor at Print magazine with an impressive freelancer's pedigree.

If, like me, you fit the profile, Gordon's obsession will give more than enough to satisfy your own in the emdashes between issues.

Image sources: emdashes logo by Jennifer Hadley

Bloggity Goodness #1

Check out:

http://americanadianlife.blogspot.com/ Rebecca Cook Dube is a friend who recently moved from Seattle to Toronto.

"This AmeriCanadian Life: The True North adventures of an American writer in Canada" is funny, wonderfully conversational and brings the kind of pleasure that comes from hearing a smart writer just musing about stuff. For all the definitions of blogs, perhaps what they really are is the equivalent of a literary salon. Imagine Oscar Wilde blogging.

Lines I love:

1. On a White House press conference: "You can almost smell the Scott McClellan flopsweat."

2. " Home is where the dog is."

3. Advice from her parents, including this one from Dad: "Everything tastes better with nuts."

Mr. Cook, I couldn't agree with you more. Brownies, salads, cookies, you name it, nuts make all the difference.

My advice to Rebecca: keep writing this blog. Definitely a book here!

Starving for a good read

Luis Gomez is starving for a good read.

"Day after day," writes Luis, "I catch myself visiting the same news web sites, the Seattle P-I, the Seattle Times, the LA Times, the NY Times, the Washington Post, etc. I'm a journalist."

Luis covers education, police and is the Latino beat reporter at the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin in southeast Washington "and almost by default I'm drawn to newspaper-style readings.

"I probably spend more time reading stories online rather than getting  in my car, warming it up, drive up to the nearest book/mag store, walk in the door, pick out a good magazine and find that I am reading the same material I could otherwise be reading from my computer.

"Long story short, I can't seem to find the right venue (or web site) where I could find a great read. And I don't mean just a well-written piece of work. I mean something that inspires me and recharges my  battery after a day's work of puns, euphemisms, synonyms, clarifications, etceteras, etc.

"I'm bored, Chip.”

Luis, I feel your brain pain. Your question offered an opportunity to throw down some thoughts on the topic, ever mindful of Saul Bellow's definition that "a writer is a reader moved to emulation."

Here's my top of the head list of reading possibilities:

Poetry. The other day, Tom French of the St. Pete Times said reading poetry is one of the ways that makes our mutual friend Anne Hull of The Washington Post such a lyrical writer. I recently heard Billy Collins, the former poet laureate speak at a conference and discuss and read poetry on our local NPR station. Great stuff. I also admire the Irish poet Eavan Boland.

If you haven't subscribed to The New Yorker, you're missing a weekly treat. At least check out the web site on Mondays when they post free selections from the current print issue.

This week's trove includes reviews of two books on the history and psychology of happiness, a short story by John Updike, and a probe by Jane Mayer into a quixotic effort by Pentagon insiders to ward off Abu Ghraib-style torture of detainees.

Slate.com is always rich with good material, especially when it's press critic Jack Shafer at the keyboard.

Have you seen Arts and Letters Daily? It's a portal for essays, books and opinion that' can take you to places you may not have visited.   

Here's another idea. Re-read favorite books.  That would take me back to novels such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Youngblood Hawke," by Herman Wouk, the book that sent me down the writing path at age 12.

As writers we must read twice, first as a reader,then as a writer. The second stage is when we identify the writer's strategies so we might apply them to our own work. If memory serves, The late Shelby Foote used to try to read the multi-volume "Remembrance of Things Past" by Marcel Proust. If there's a book you like, consider reading everything by that author. What you'll find is that every  writer has his/her ups and downs, which can be a comfort when you're convinced your latest story's a bomb.

Pursue your passions. Last year I was fixated on reading about the brain, which led me to my favorite book on the brain and its status as an ever-evolving organ capable of transformation: "The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force," by Jeffrey Schwartz, a neuropsychiatrist influenced by Buddhism and Sharon Begley, science columnist for The Wall Street Journal, whose prose makes it palatable for the lay reader.

I also like books about memory (especially since I can feel mine fading as each day passes) such as Daniel Scatters "The Seven Sins of Memory."

I love to read interviews with writers. My current favorite is "The New New Journalism: Conversions with America's Best Nonfiction Writers on their Craft," by Robert S. Boynton. Full of inspiration and tips from the likes of Susan Orlean, Ted Conover, Leon Dash et al.

Of course, I'd be remiss not to suggest "Best Newspaper Writing," edited by my colleague Aly Colón, published by Poynter and Congressional Quarterly Press. Here's a purchasing link for the 2005 edition.

And if you'll forgive the plug, "America's Best Newspaper Writing," an anthology of the best of 25 years of " Best Newspaper Writing," edited by Roy Peter Clark and me, has just been published in a second edition by Bedford/St. Martin's Press.

I was going to stop there but this weekend my brother Jeff raved so much about 'The Great Influenza" by John M. Barry that I’m just a credit card swipe away from adding it to my reading list.

There's so much great reading out there; if you've gotten this far, please feel free to add to the pile.

Luis and I will take all the help we can get.

There's Something about Mary

Magdalene, that is. In this week's New Yorker, a lengthy fact piece by Joan Acocella traces the 2,000 year obsession about the prostitute "who washed Christ's feet with her tears."

It's one of those stories The New Yorker does so well by combining research, including a microscopic scan of the literature, past and current, on the subject, and stylish writing that produces an indelible impression. We read them, whether or not the subject interests us, because of what we learn. Among my favorite factoids about Mary Magdalene:

"She was chosen as the patron saint not just of barrelmakers and gardeners but also of glovemakers, perfume manufacturers, and hairdressers—in other words, the purveyors of all those fripperies which led her to her fall. (She also became the patroness of prostitutes. In [the French city of] Beaucaire, on her saint’s day, the local whores ran a race in her honor.)"

Also in this early online look:

• A Web-only companion Q&A with Steve Coll, former Washington Post managing editor turned NYer staff writer, who writes on relations between India and Pakistan.
• Malcolm Gladwell with, as always, a provocative take, this time on homelessness.
• Paul Rudnick's appreciation on playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who died, too young, last week
• For "24" addicts, a Nancy Franklin review
• a Jeffrey Goldberg profile of Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson

The week's other contributors, clustered behind Eustace Tilley's firewall, make this anniversary issue one you'll probably want to read in print so you don't miss any of the other good stuff: James B. Stewart, Susan Orlean, Nora Ephron and Adam Gopnik. And remember: the links disappear next Sunday night.

Eustace Tilley's Early Bird Special

    Impatient readers of The New Yorker, heads-up! A sampling of this week's issue is online.

• A Web-only Q&A with Katherine Boo that focuses on her time spent with poor young mothers in Louisiana, along with a link to a 2003 piece on the impact of marriage on welfare
• A short story by Tobias Wolff
• Another one of "The Tipping Point's" Malcolm Gladwell provocative stories: this one asks the question: what can pit bulls teach us about profiling
• a short take on the Hamas Victory, Louis Menand's review of a new novel by Jay McInerney.

For non-subscribers, these represent a few freebies, but bear in mind, they will disappear next Sunday when the new magazine's highlights are posted.

Of course, if you subscribe you can just hold on for mail delivery later this week.

Otherwise, get 'em while they're hot---linked.