Notes from 2009:
Dec. 30:
Duke Ellington's own favorite song was "In A
Sentimental Mood" with John Coltrane on the saxaphone.
Dec. 28:
My Favorite Books...
Lillian Ross wrote Here But Not Here: A Love Story...
The Bobbsey Twins
The Five Little Peppers
City Editor
Dec. 23:
The National Security Group on Afghanistan and Pakistan..
 "From
the very first meeting, everyone started with set opinions. And
no opinion was the same by the end of the process."
...Gen. James L. Jones, the President's national security
adviser...
Dec. 21:
WEASEL WORDS...
MISSION CREEP...
In an appearance Sept.20 on "This Week," President Obama
complains of "mission creep" in Afghanistan.
Dec. 18:
Writers On Writing...
 Haruki
Murakami wrote The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle...
"Most Japanese novelists are addicted to the beauty of the
language. I'd like to change that...Language is...an instrument
to communicate."
Dec. 16:
Writers On Writing...
Don DeLillo wrote Underworld...
"History is the sum total of all the things they aren't telling
us."
Dec. 14:
Writers On Writing...
 E.L.
Doctorow wrote City Of God...
"History is the present. That's why every generation writes it
anew."
Dec. 11:
 Writers
On Writing...
Quintilian wrote Institutio Oratoria...
"Erasure is as important as writing."
Dec. 9:
FILM NOIR...
The term, French for "black film" represents a genre of dark,
violent crime thrillers that came into vogue during the
post-World War II era.
(Examples would include Bryan Foy's... He Walked By
Night... co-starring Jack Webb. This film started Webb
on the road to his Dragnet series)
Dec. 7:
Writers At Work...
Simone de Beauvoir wrote The Second Sex...
"I have to find a way of saying the truth without saying it;
that is exactly what is literature after all, clever lies which
secretly say the truth."
Dec. 4:
 Writers
On Writing...
Alex Dryden wrote Red to Black...
Red To Black is fiction. But as Ed Lucas at The Economist
pointed out to me after the book was published in the U.K.,
maybe fiction is the only way to write the truth about Russia
these days.
Dec. 2:
My Favorite Books...
Nelson Algren wrote Chicago: City On The Make...
NATIVE SON
WAR DIARY
JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE EARTH
BLUE BOY
THE GOOD SOLDIER SCHWEIK
THE OUTWARD ROOM
GOD'S ANGRY MAN
CALL IT SLEEP
THE POWER-HOUSE
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
YAMA (THE PIT)
Nov. 30:
 Writers
On Writing...
Moss Hart wrote Act One...
"Writing consists of ideas, not words."
Nov. 25:
Jim's Bookshelf...
Tearing Down The Wall Of Sound: The Rise And Fall Of Phil
Spector by Mike Brown (Borzio Book/Alfred A. Knopf)
Certainly a great history of Rock & Roll...a musical dreamland
with all the legends. But still...for Spector it was'nt enough.
Guns and mayhem were.
Jumping Off The Cliff: A Biography Of The Great American
Director by Patrick McGilligan (SMP)
A detailed account of Robert Altman...he learned film in Kansas
City, then the endless California TV series' and finally the
major motion pictures.
Nov. 23:
Jim's Bookshelf...
I would highly recommend the CD version of Barbara
Walters Audition (Random House Audio: 21 CD's) Perfect for a
long car ride because Barbara has had quite a long, fascinating
news career. Never tedious, just keeps moving along.
Nov. 20:
My Favorite Books...
Mao Tse-tung wrote his Little Red Book...
THE WATER MARGIN
Nov. 18:
Directors On Film...
 Otto
Preminger directed Carmen Jones...
"A good story is a good story, even if a similar one failed in
the past. A good actor is still a good actor, even after he has
given a bad performance recently. And a good director remains a
good director, after making several unsuccessful pictures. There
is no formula for success. You cannot play safe by mixing two
parts of sex, two parts of violence, a few tears, and two dozen
laughs. Even when a film is finished and acclaimed by the
critics it is impossible to predict its success at the box
office. I follow my personal taste, my instinct. If I feel
enthusiastic about a story, its theme, its characters, I put it
on the screen as I see it and hope to transfer my enthusiasm to
the audience. If I succeed, word of mouth is my ally. But my
real reward is the work itself. Success matters only because
without it one cannot continue to work.
Nov. 16:
My Favorite Books...
Ayn Rand wrote The Fountainhead...
CALUMET "K"
THE MAN WHO LAUGHS
Nov. 13:
Writers At Work...
 James
Rollins wrote The Doomsday Key...
"It starts with a box, a cardboard box lawyer's file box. Into
that box goes anything that might make a story: a stray idea
that pops into my head, an article from the latest Scientific
American, a note jotted while watching the History Channel and
so on. Once a month, I sift through that box and cull anything
that no longer interests me. But during that process, by pure
chance, odd bits end up next to each other on the floor: a piece
of history that ends in a question mark, a bit of science that
makes me go 'what if?' And in that moment, I discover a
possible."
Nov. 11:
The Disinformation Company's "Favorite Books" My Space
Survey based on 1,074 responses...
1) Nineteen Eighty-Four
2) The Hitchkiker's Guide To The Galaxy
3) Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
4) The Lord Of The Rings (Trilogy)
5) Brave New World
6) Slaughterhouse Five
7) The Catcher In The Rye
8) Tao Te Ching
9) The Illuminatus! Trilogy
10) Ishmael
Nov. 9:
Jim Agnew On Film...
Certain films make me want to become part of them..even
after I leave the theatre. I want the cast to become part of my
real life! Examples are...Lolita, Lilith and Otto Preminger's
Advise And Consent.
I just read Foster Hirsch's very strong bio of Mr. Preminger and
I highly recommend it. It drives home the power of the studio
bosses, in Otto's case, Daryl F. Zanuck. And Otto Preminger's
organizational genius.
I've ordered Mr. Preminger's autobiography and I can't wait to
read it.
Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King by Foster Hirsch
(Alfred Knopf)
Nov. 6:
Writers On Writing...
Alain De Bottom wrote The Pleasures And Sorrows Of Work...
"Its ubiquity, and its mystery. The landscapes we've made in the
modern world are pretty strange. We don't understand them. We
think, 'I don't know what's happening in that warehouse. I don't
know what that box is by the side of the road. I don't know
where that lorry could possibly be going. And what are those
guys doing in the middle of the night in that office.' I try to
answer those questions, to make us more at home in a world that
can seem confusing".
Nov. 4:
Writers At Work...
 Carolyn
Hart wrote Dare To Die...
"Every time I write or read a mystery, I am buoyed by my belief
that, indeed, truth will set me free, and that there is a
special place readers and I can go, hand in hand, where goodness
will be celebrated."
Nov. 2:
Writers At Work...
Luoise Penny wrote...The Chief Insp. Armand Gamache
series...
"My books aren't about murder--that's simply a catalyst to look
at human nature. They aren't about blood but about the marrow,
about what happens deep inside, in places we didn't even know
existed."
Oct. 30:
 Joseph
Stalin to Averal Harriman during WWII meeting...
"Wars are not won with plans".
Oct. 28:
Writers At Work...
Agatha Christie wrote The Mysterious Affair At Styles...
"I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest."
Oct. 26:
JFK's Favorite Senator...
"He so admired Walter George (conservative senior Democrat
from Georgia), saw him at every Senate opportunity and would
always quote to me at night whatever Walter George had said to
him during the day. All that he admired in senators he saw in
Walter George."
from Counselor by Ted Sorensen (RandomHouse)
Oct. 23:
Writers At Work...
Nicholas Baker wrote Human Smoke...
 "I
was in the middle of writing another book that was partly about
WWII, and I realized I didn't understand how it all began. So I
started a very straightforward effort of self-education, and
then it grew into something else, which I guess is an attempt to
suffer through how something so horrible can happen."
Oct. 21:
Katherine Hepburn On Spencer Tracy...
" I knew right away that I found him irresistible, just
exactly that, irresistible...I found him totally,
totally---total."
Oct. 19:
Writers On Writing...
Kate Walbert wrote A Short History Of Women...
 "I
find that if I really get involved in research I don't have any
time left to get involved in fiction. If I know too much, it
squelches the impulse. I have the most fun, I write the best
lines, when it's completely coming out of my imagination. So I
do research after to make sure I've got my facts right."
Oct. 16:
Writers At Work...
 Barbara
Brown Taylor wrote An Altar In The World...
"I have never (before the last book) received a substantial
royalty for my books. I used (the royalties from my last book)
to build a writer's cotttage--12' x 12' in the woods that has no
electricty and no plumbing. I've now got a solar panel so I can
get some light when it's stormy, but that is like a Sabbath in
space. Truly, it's a matter of a chair, a fire and a morning,
and maybe a dog.
Oct. 14:
Writers At Work....
Daniel
Suarez wrote Daemon...
"I've always felt a compulsion to write about things that
interest me. I used to joke with my wife that the urge to write
is a low-grade mental Illness. I always heard it was a lonely
profession, but I just don't see it that way. I can't tell you
how many cool and fascinating people I've encounted as this
process unfolded. As someone who's always interested in learning
new things, I find writing gives the ultimate reason to ask
questions of people in far-flung locations about little-known
topics. To me, It's a dream job."
Oct. 12:
Writers On Writing...
 Ralph
Keyes wrote...The Quote Verifier...
"One reason I write is simple curiosity. Writing gives me
license to look into things I'd like to look into anyway, such
as quotations, language use and word origins."
Oct. 9:
"No one here gives up!"...Shouted to Che Guevara by Juan Almeida
Bosque, giving the Cuban Revolution one of its most lasting
slogans and ensuring Bosque's place in Cuban Communist history.
...NYT obit of Bosque 9/13/2009...
Oct. 7:
Adolph Hitler's favorite author was Karl May, author of
Indian novels. May wrote about the American West without ever
having been to America.
...from Spandau:The Secret Diaries by Albert Speer
(Macmillan Publishing Co.)
Oct. 5:
Jim Agnew On Crime...
August 8, 1963...The Royal Mail Train Robbery...
"The plan itself was its most brilliant in its essential
simplicity. It depended on split-second timing. There could,
of,course, be no rehearsal, in the ordinary sense of the word,
though every man on the job was to know his work, as though it
were a role he has played for years and each and all were to
know the site and, eventually, the surrounding countryside
blindfolded. The timing was rehearsed, once only on the scene,
with the robbers springing on to non-existent vans and rolling
200 non-existent bags to the waiting vans. Everything on the
night was to depend on each actor playing the exact role
assigned to him and no other; at the rate which planning had
worked out, with swift alterrnatives also provided for, since
the events never work exactly as planned. In short, it was to be
the equivalent of a commando raid, with the same clear
understanding that, just as in wartime, anyone who failed would
not be helped by the others to the prejudice of the operation.
If possible, he would be rescued then or thereafter, but, if
not, he undertook to keep his mouth shut. And this had been
done. Not one of the gang who were on the track has betrayed
anyone else--and this is rare in the annals of crime."
...The Robbers' Tale: The Real Story Of The Great Train Robbery
by Peta Fordham (Popular Library, 1965)...
Oct. 2:
BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL
Sunday Sept. 13 10AM - 6 PM
Sept. 30:
The Museum Of Modern Art...www.MoMA.ORG
Sep 13-Apr 12...Monet's Water Lilies
NEW PHOTOGRAPHY...2009
Sep 30-Jan 11...Paul Sietsema
Sep 30-Feb 15...Bauhas...1919-1933
Nov 8-Jan 25...Workshops For
Modernity...
Nov 22-Apr 26...Tim Burton.
Sept. 28:
Jim's Notes...
I'm re-reading Cornelius Ryan's memoir of his long battle with
cancer...A Private Battle (Simon & Schuster, 1979)...
The following is quoted from Ryan's masterwork...The Longest
Day...
"The men of the invasion fleet heard the roar of planes. Wave
after wave passed overhead...Nobody could say a word. And then
as the last formation flew over, an amber light blinked down
through the clouds on the fleet below. Slowly it flashed out in
Morse code three dots and a dash: V for Victory."
Sept. 25:
Fidel Castro announced to the world that he was a
socialist in a speech following the Bay of Pigs invasion and its
failure...
"They cannot forgive our being right under their noses, or see
how we have made a revolution, a socialist revolution, right
under the very nose of the United States."
Sept. 23:
Jim Agnew On Crime...
Dillinger/Crown Point Jail Break/The Wooden Gun...
Letter from John Dillinger to his sister Audrey from St.
Paul...March, 1934...
Dear Sis, i thought I would write you a few lines and let
you know I am still perculating. Dont worry about me honey, for
that wont help any, and besides I am having a lot of fun. I am
sending Emmett my wooden gun and i want him to allways keep it.
I see Deputy Blunk says I had a real forty-five. Thats a lot of
hooey to cover up because they dont like to admit that I locked
eight deputys and a dozen trustys up with my wooden gun before I
got my hands on the two machine guns and you should have seen
their faces Ha! Ha! Ha!...
I got shot a week ago but I am all right now just a little sore
I bane one tough swede. Ha! Ha! Well honey I guess I'll close
for the time give my love to all and I hope I can see you soon.
Lots of love from Johnnie
Sept. 21:
Jim's Crime Book Picks...
Havana Nocturne: How The Mob Owned Cuba...And Lost it To The
Revolution by T.J. English (William Morrow)
A great, factual history of the rise of Castro and the fall of
Meyer Lansky, et.al.
John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crooks Tour Of Crime And Corruption
in St. Paul, 1920-1936 by Paul Maccabee (Minnesota
Historical Society Press)
Fills in a lot of blanks on Dillinger, Alvin Karpis, The Hamm
kidnapping...lots more with great graphics!
Sept. 18:
 "I
do to others what they do to me, only worse."
...Jimmy Hoffa to Bobby Kennedy during their first meeting
over dinner...
Sept. 16:
Writers On Writing...
William Faulkner wrote...Sanctuary...
"Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency...to get
the book written, If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not
hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old
ladies."
Sept. 14:
Writers At Work...
 Lynne
Sharon Schwartz wrote...Disturbances In The Field...
"Leave the dishes unwashed and the demands on your time
unanswered and refuse to do what people ask of you."
Sept. 11:
Writers On Writing...
Red Smith wrote...Out Of The Red...
"Writing Is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and
open a vein."
Sept. 9:
Writers On Writing...
 Andrei
Codrescu wrote...A Hole In The Flag...
"Best advice I ever got was from the Romanian poet Nichita
Stanescu, who told me in Bucharest, before I emigrated: 'Learn
English. French is dead.'"
Sept. 2:
Writers On Writing...
Ernest Hemingway wrote...The Old Man And The Sea...
"When writing a novel a writer should create living people;
people not characters. A character is a caricature."
Aug. 31:
Writers On Writing...
 Nadine
Gordimer wrote...The Pickup...
"Artists often try many things before they settle down to do
what they do well...it's kind of showing off, that's
all...eventually they develop one thing. In my case I developed
the writing."
Aug. 28:
James Michener's favorite work of all his bestsellers
was... IBERIA.
Aug. 26:
Writers On Writing,,,
Tolstoy wrote...War And Peace...
"My task is to chronicle those little lacerations upon the
spirit."
Aug. 24:
Writers At Work...
Joanne Trollope wrote...Next Of Kin...
 "But
mostly, my life is dull and orderly. I try to have the dog
walked, the wash in the machine, and the post opened before I
sit down to work, I'm not good at writing with disorder all
about. At 9 a.m., these pesky demands behind me, I finally put
pen to paper. At 1:30 in the afternoon, I stop."
Aug. 21:
Writers At Work...
Joyce Carol Oates wrote...American Appetites...
"I work hard. I write by hand, starting stories countless times,
making comments as I go, often producing as many as 1,000 pages
of notes for every 250 printed pages. Bellefleur (1980), which
has been characterized as springing from a dream, 'took lots of
work,' with charts and graphs and heavy engineering. When people
accuse me of writing easily, I can't imagine what they mean."
Aug. 19:
Writers On Writing...
Flannery O'Connor wrote...Wise Blood...
"Any idiot with a nickel's worth of talent can emerge from a
writing class able to write a complete story. In fact so many
people can now write competent stories that the short story as a
medium is dying of competence."
Aug. 17:
Writers On Writing...
 Francine
du Plessix Gray wrote...October Blood...
...Keep Your Sentences Erotic...
...Create A Pact of Trust...
...Strive For Muscle...
...Rebel Against The Tyranny Of Genre...
Aug. 14:
The Robert B. Silvers Lecture...Live from the NYPL...
Oliver Sacks on "Hallucination"...Monday, September 21, 2009,
7PM...
see
www.nypl.org/live
Aug. 12:
Summer Splendors At The National Gallery Of Art...
Through September 7... The Budapest Horse.
Through November 1...An Antiquity Of Imagination.
see
www.nga.org
Aug. 10:
The University of Alabama Symposia...Friday, September
25, 2009...
Law Knowledge & Imagination...Imagining Legality...Where Law
Meets Popular Culture...
see...AlabamaSymposia.com
Aug. 7:
Writers On Writing...
Cheeni Rao wrote In Hanuman's Hands...
"A lot of people who have struggled with addiction have
walked a similar path. And I am really proud of the person I am
today, so if sharing my difficulties allows people to enter my
story, then sharing these events serves their purposes. It's
nice now, though, having put it all out there, and it's a source
of strength."
Aug. 5:
Writers At Work...
Nelson Algren wrote Chicago: City On The Make...
"A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from
society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed
robbery."
Aug. 3:
Writers On Writing...
 Binnie
Kirshenbaum wrote The Scenic Route...
"One story always digresses to another story; that's part of the
scenic route of storytelling. The essense of the book is that
story matters. The stories we know and the stories we tell
define who we are."
July 31:
The following are considered The Best American Short
Novels...
The Bear by William Faulkner
Noon Wine by Katherine Anne Porter
Billy Budd by Herman Melville
The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James
The Pilgrim Hawk by Glenway Wescott
July 29:
For information on The Norman Mailer Writers Colony at
Provinceton, Massachusetts...contact
www.nmwcolony.org ...
The Polonsky Post Doctoral Fellowship...contact
www.vanleer.org.il .
July 27:
The Winners of the Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity
(Awarded by the Library of Congress)...
Peter Brown for Augustine Of Hippo & Romilda Thapar for Early
India.
July 24:
Neil Graham has received the top prize for children's
literature: the John Newberry Medal for The Graveyard Book...
The Randolph Caldecott Medal for illustrator of the best picture
book went to Beth Krommes for The House In The Night...
The Coretta Scott King Award for best author was given to
Kadir Nelson, for We Are The Ship...
from the American Library Association.
July 22:
Just thought I'd share this short gem with you....
R.J.
Please read what Garrison said the other day about writing
fiction.
(This is a response to a letter to him about trying to “find
your voice” when it comes to writing fiction)
Don't work too hard at finding your voice. Find the voices of
other people first — people around you, your family, the silent
people taken for granted, the people who ride the bus to work,
the mi sfits — see if you can get the interior voice of one of
them down on paper, and keep trying until you think you've
broken through. This is the doorway to fiction, and it starts
with inspired journalism. Listening to people and trying to
imagine them speaking openly and honestly in the recesses of
their souls. As you are able to bring other people to the page,
you'll find more and more confidence, and your style will
emerge. Writers are people who write, not people who think about
writing, and the less you dwell on your own insecurities, the
better. Distract yourself by taking notes. Absorb your
surroundings — they are stranger than they may seem, and you'll
realize that when you put them down on paper.
July 20:
Smithsonian Folkways, the Smithsonian Institution's record
label, has extensive archives of recordings from all over the
world. Among the famous voices...Langston Hughes, John
Masefield, Timothy Leary and Che Guevara...listen to samples at
www.folkways.si.edu.
July 17:
The Poetry Archive is an online collection of poets
introducing and reading their work. You can listen free at
www.poetryarchive.org. Works include T.S. Eliot reading
"Journey of the Magi, William Butler Yeats reading "The Lake
Isle of Innisfree", and Spike Milligan reading "In The Land of
the Bumbly Boo.".
July 15:
Library of Congress has an online resource page for poetry
audio recordings both in library collections and elsewhere at
www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/poetryaudio/.
July 13:
A Researcher's Report by Jim Agnew...
 I've
decided to quote "three" sources has my bottom line on the
decades old controversy...Who wrote... Profiles In Courage ?
Counselor by Ted Sorensen (Harper)
"The charge, which still lingers, was and is nonsense about a
brilliant Harvard graduate who had written two books before
Profiles; one, Why England Slept, had been a Book-of-the-Month
Club bestseller. He was a man whose sense of history was
demonstrated time and again as senator, and as president. He
retained on his presidential staff a resident historian, and he
continued to read and quote history not only in his speeches to
the public but in private advice to his staff.
As I said under oath, the book's concept was his, and the
selection of stories was his. He immersed himself in the book's
research, provided its philosophy, wrote or rewrote each of its
chapters, chose its title, and provided constant directions and
corrections to those of us supplying him with raw material; yet
JFK generously thanked in the book "my research associate,
Theodore C. Sorensen, for his invaluable assistance in the
assembly and preparation of the material upon which this book is
based."
Journals 1952-2000 by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (Penguin
Books)
"I might add a few remarks by JBK (Jackie) which do not appear
on the oral history tape. She does not like Ted Sorensen, and
the reason is that in 1956 he gave people around Washington the
impression that he, and not JFK, had written Profiles In
Courage. JBK says that for a couple of years she could not bear
to speak to Ted but that luckily JFK had preserved the long,
yellow, legal-sized sheets on which he had written the book,
Cass Canfield was able to obtain a public retraction. She also
said that the first question Bob McNamera asked JFK at their
first meeting was whether he had written Profiles In Courage.
JBK also said that JFK, wanting to do something for Ted and not
supposing that the book would do exceptionally well, made over
all the royalties to him. I found this hard to believe and
checked it with Bobby who said, yes, it was true--that Ted had
received all the royalties up to the new edition (the royalties
from which go to the Library). This must have amounted to nearly
$200,000. "
Profiles In Courage by John F. Kennedy (Harper & Brothers)
Dedication...TO MY WIFE
Preface...The greatest debt is owed to my research
associate, Theodore C. Sorensen, for his invaluable assistance
in the assembly and preparation of the material upon which this
book was based.
Preface...This book would not have been possible without the
encouragement, assistance and criticism offered from the very
beginning by my wife, Jacqueline, whose help during all the days
of my convalescence I cannot ever adequately acknowledge.
Preface...A long period of hospitalization and convalescence
following a spinal operation in October, 1954, gave me my first
opportunity to do the reading and research necessary for this
project.
July 10:
Dear colleagues, friends, reviewers and bloggers,
I wanted to share with you my appearance last night on The
Daily Show with Jon Stewart, discussing my new book, The Mad
Ones: Crazy Joe Gallo and the Revolution at the Edge of the
Underworld.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=230676&title=Tom-Folsom
"Joey Gallo wrote poetry, argued about the meaning of life, dug
jazz and red Camus. Also, he was handy with a chain whip... The
real fun of this book is the reader is never quite sure what's
going to happen on the next page." -- Associated Press
"Tom Folsom deftly evokes a wacky world populated by the sort of
characters celebrated by Jack Kerouac." -- The New York Times
Visit The Mad Ones at www.tomfolsom.com
July 8:
My Favorite Presidential Books...
 Jonathan
Alter wrote The Defining Moment...
LINCOLN by David Herbert Donald
THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT by Edmund Morris
NO ORDINARY TIME by Doris Kearns Goodwin
THE YEARS OF LYNDON JOHNSON by Robert Cato
THE FINAL DAYS by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
July 1:
Writers On Writing...
Jesse Ball wrote The Way Through Doors...
"Prose has the burden to entertain. The poem, on the other hand,
is the place, of all places even more than philosophy, where you
can get the sharpest look into what thought forms are, without
the burden to entertain. To me, a book of poems is a manual on
thinking, on stripping away weakness from your thought and
having the sharpest, clearest perception. I don't think it's
necessarily a difference of style or content--in a certain way
good writing is good writing; it's the clearest transmission of
thought."
June 29:
Writers On Writing...
 John
Cheever wrote Falconer...
"Loneliness I taste. The chair I sit in, the room, the house,
none of this has substance. I think of Hemingway, what we
remember of his work is not so much the color of the sky as it
is the absolute taste of loneliness. Loneliness is not, I think,
an absolute, but its taste is more powerful than any other. I
think that endeavoring to be a serious writer is quite a
dangerous career."
June 26:
Summer in Spain at the National Gallery of Art...
Luis Melendez...May 17-August 23
The Art of Power...June 28-November 1
see
www.NGA.gov
June 24:
ALA Annual Conference...JULY...Chicago...
see
www.ALA.org ...
June 22:
Last weekend, Paul Dry Books had a display booth at the BEA
(BookExpo America) in New York. There publishers and "book
people" meet in a controlled frenzy to talk about the season's
upcoming books.
We have attended these gatherings since 2000. Each year, we have
a book or two we particularly tout. This year, The Book Shopper
led the list. Since everyone at the BEA is a book shopper,
Murray Browne's book interested everyone who came by.
And who were these happy warriors eager to weigh themselves down
with giveaways of all kinds? Well, some of you were among them:
librarians from libraries small, large, and very small, writers
who were at the BEA to promote their already published work,
writers looking for publishers, printers looking for publishers,
delivery men from Chinese restaurants distributing, every hour
or so, their menus, publicists offering to help publishers get
buzz for their books, software makers who specialize in serving
the book trade, media people from small and big markets--from
obscure blogs to national networks-and remainder folks who will
buy for pennies the overrun copies of last year's would-be hit.
Last, but by far the most important, were the buyers from
bookstores (yes, actual buyers of books), looking for new books
that their customers20back home in Portland or Cincinnati or
Austin might want to read.
These are the folks we most wanted to meet so we can pitch
our titles to them. But all of you are book people and so we're
interested in all of you. Alas we did see many people (maybe
even some of you) who wanted to pitch us.
When a well-put together man in his forties comes up to the
booth and appears quite interested in our titles from several
years past (which we display along with our new books), I assume
he's probably out to sell printing services in China or promote
his ability to get our books buzzed in the media. As for the
work of the fleet-footed courier who deposits all those Chinese
menus, by the end of the BEA we had acquired a library of menus
whose offerings are almost as extensive as the quantity of books
on display at the show.
If you were at the BEA, let us know what your experience was
like. And if some of you have already had a chance to read The
Book Shopper, we would like to hear your thoughts about it.
Sincerely, Paul Dry
Visit us at PAULDRYBOOKS.COM.
Shipping & Handling are always FREE at our website!
June 19:
Greetings Folks,
From the kitchen table, from somewhere out there on the
road:
I just received a grant from the New York Watershed Agricultural
Council and I'll be doing some Trailer Talk picnics in Sullivan
County sharing locally grown foods and addressing issues around
clean water, gas drilling, food and more! I've also been
producing Trailer Talk reports and commentaries for 51% out of
WAMC that broadcasts nationally. Additionally, I received a
grant (which I had to be nominated fo r) from Art Matters for
the Trailer Talk "On The Line" project that I'm still
fundraising for which is about the border between Texas and
Mexico. It deals with ideas of home, identity and belonging.
Joan Wulff, The First Lady of Fly Fishing at Junction Pool in
Roscoe, NY
Of course, I've been busy as you know and Trailer Talks have
included traveling to West Virginia to see and meet the citizens
fighting Mountaintop Removal, Obama's Inauguration, Natural Gas
Drilling forums, Gay Marriage, The Bethel Woods Woodstock
Museum.
Actor Rip Torn and DEC Officer Steingardt at Junction Pool in
Roscoe, NY
Recent shows are: an interview with the First Lady of
fly-fishing, Joan Wulff. She's in her eighties and not only
casting to the awe of all of those around her in th e rivers,
but also continuing to fight to protect the environment around
her. In addition the incredibly wonderful actor Rip Torn joins
me to speak about fishing and acting. Simon Singh and I speak
about the big bang theory and physics theories about the origin
of the earth. I speak with one of the first same sex couples to
marry in New Paltz NY, Thanks Mom, a contemplation on mothers
and my Mother, Dorette, a conversation with John Adams the
founder of the NRDC, Sue Currier the director of the Delaware
Higlands Conservancy and Peter Pinchot from the Milford
Experimental Forest. Finally this week in celebration of
friend's falling in love with vintage trailers and bringing them
to the neighborhood, a conversation with a trailer historian (Al
Hesselbart) from Elkhart, Indiana.
Amazingly, I realized that if everyone that receives my mailing
contributes $20 to Trailer Talk (more of course gleefully
accepted) I could purchase a replacement vehicle to tow the
trailer. It's that or I'll have to start shopping for a team of
Belgian draft horses or some mules to transport us!
Keeping it homemade, Sabrina
Guess What?
TRAILER TALK can now be heard every Friday at 2 PM EST on WJFF
Radio Catskill 90.5 FM (streaming live at wjffradio.org) in
Jeffersonville, New York, the nation's only hydro-powered radio
station.
Podcasts of the show are available at trailertalk.net on the
PROGRAMS page too.
Sabrina Artel's TRAILER TALK is a live performance, a
community event, and a radio broadcast. Its goal is to bring
attention to important issues where least expected, on the
streets and in people's neighborhoods.
Everyone who participates in TRAILER TALK is important to both
the live and the recorded audio event. Thanks so much to
everyone for joining in the conversations!
Safe travels,Sabrina
If you support independent radio, live performance and the voices of your
neighbors speaking for themselves , please help me by making a
contribution to Sabrina Artel's TRAILER TALK. To make tax
deductible donations please contact me directly. Thank you so
much!
June 17:
2009 Fiction & Non-fiction Writing Seminar
NY Palace Hotel...New York City...August 14-16...
see
www.rutgersseminars.com
June 15:
Brooklyn Book Festival
September 13, 2009...
see
www.visitbrooklyn.org
June 12:
Illness and medical bills linked to nearly two-thirds of
all bankruptcies
Harvard study finds 50 percent increase from 2001
Most of those bankrupted by illness were middle class and had
insurance
Medical problems contributed to nearly two-thirds (62.1
percent) of all bankruptcies in 2007, according to a study in
the August issue of the American Journal of Medicine that will
be published online Thursday. The data were collected prior to
the current economic downturn and hence likely understate the
current burden of financial suffering. Between 2001 and 2007,
the proportion of all bankruptcies attributable to medical
problems rose by 49.6 percent. The authors' previous 2001
findings have been widely cited by policy leaders, including
President Obama.
Surprisingly, most of those bankrupted by medical problems had
health insurance. More than three-quarters (77.9 percent) were
insured at the start of the bankrupting illness, including 60.3
percent who had private coverage. Most of the medically bankrupt
we re solidly middle class before financial disaster hit.
Two-thirds were homeowners and three-fifths had gone to college.
In many cases, high medical bills coincided with a loss of
income as illness forced breadwinners to lose time from work.
Often illness led to job loss, and with it the loss of health
insurance.
Even apparently well-insured families often faced high
out-of-pocket medical costs for co-payments, deductibles and
uncovered services. Medically bankrupt families with private
insurance reported medical bills that averaged $17,749 vs.
$26,971 for the uninsured. High costs - averaging $22,568 - were
incurred by those who initially had private coverage but lost it
in the course of their illness.
Individuals with diabetes and those with neurological disorders
such as multiple sclerosis had the highest costs, an average of
$26,971 and $34,167 respectively. Hospital bills were the
largest single expense for about half of all medically bankrupt
families; prescription drugs were the largest expense for 18.6
percent.
The research, carried out jointly by researchers at Harvard Law
School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University, and
supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is
the first nationwide study on medical causes of bankruptcy.
The=2 0researchers surveyed a random sample of 2,314 bankruptcy
filers during early 2007 and examined their bankruptcy court
records. In addition, they conducted extensive telephone
interviews with 1,032 of these bankruptcy filers.
Their 2001 study, which was published in 2005, surveyed debtors
in only five states. In the current study, findings for those
five states closely mirrored the national trends.
Subsequent to the 2001 study, Congress made it harder to file
for bankruptcy, causing a sharp drop in filings. However,
personal bankruptcy filings have soared as the economy has
soured and are now back to the 2001 level of about 1.5 million
annually.
Dr. David Himmelstein, the lead author of the study and an
associate professor of medicine at Harvard, commented: "Our
findings are frightening. Unless you're Warren Buffett, your
family is just one serious illness away from bankruptcy. For
middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little
protection. Most of us have policies with so many loopholes,
co-payments and deductibles that illness can put you in the
poorhouse. And even the best job-based health insurance often
vanishes when prolonged illness causes job loss - precisely when
families need it most. Private health insurance is a defective
product, aki n to an umbrella that melts in the rain."
"For many families, bankruptcy is a deeply shameful experience,"
noted Elizabeth Warren, Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard
and a study co-author. Professor Warren, a leading expert on
personal bankruptcy, went on: "People arrive at the bankruptcy
courts exhausted - financially, physically and emotionally. For
most, bankruptcy is a last choice to deal with unmanageable
circumstances."
According to study co-author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, an
associate professor of medicine at Harvard and primary care
physician in Cambridge, Mass.: "We need to rethink health
reform. Covering the uninsured isn't enough. Reform also needs
to help families who already have insurance by upgrading their
coverage and assuring that they never lose it. Only single-payer
national health insurance can make universal, comprehensive
coverage affordable by saving the hundreds of billions we now
waste on insurance overhead and bureaucracy. Unfortunately,
Washington politicians seem ready to cave in to insurance firms
and keep them and their counterfeit coverage at the core of our
system. Reforms that expand phony insurance - stripped-down
plans riddled with co-payments, deductibles and exclusions -
won't stem the rising tide of medical bankruptcy."
Dr. Deborah Thorne, associate professor of sociology at Ohio
University and study co-author, stated: "American families are
confronting a panoply of social forces that make it terribly
difficult to maintain financial stability - job losses and wages
that have not kept pace with the cost of living, exploitation
from the various lending industries, and, probably most
consequential and disgraceful, a health care system that is so
dysfunctional that even the most mundane illness or injury can
result in bankruptcy. Families who file medical bankruptcies are
overwhelmingly hard-working, middle-class families who have
played by the rules of our economic system, and they deserve
nothing less than affordable health care."
*****
A copy of the study is available at http://www.pnhp.org/new_bankruptcy_study
or through the American Journal of Medicine, ajmmedia@elsevier.com,
(212) 633-3944. The authors have also prepared a supplementary
"Fact Sheet" and a "Q&A" on medical bankruptcy, both of which
detail the study's methods and findings. See same link above.
"Medical bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a
national stud y," David U. Himmelstein, M.D; Deborah Thorne,
Ph.D.; Elizabeth Warren, J.D.; Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H.
American Journal of Medicine, June 4, 2009 (online).
Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org), a
membership organization of over 16,000 physicians, supports a
single-payer national health insurance program. To contact a
physician-spokesperson in your area, visit www.pnhp.org/stateactions
or call (312) 782-6006.
June 10:
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PRESS RELEASE
June 1, 2009
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For Immediate
Release
Tara Gelsomino,
Editorial
Marketing Manager
401-295-3831
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BBC Audiobooks Amer
ica Wins Audie®,
Benjamin Franklin
Awards™
MARTIN MISUNDERSTOOD,
THE GOOD RAT, and THE
ODYSSEY are honored by
the Audio Publishers
Association &
Independent Book
Publishers Association
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North Kingstown, RI
-BBC Audiobooks
America proudly
announces that two of
its 2008 titles were
the recipients of
Benjamin Franklin
Awards from the
Independent Book
Publishers Association
(PMA) on May 28, 2009.
The exclusive
audiobook original,
Martin Misunderstood,
written by Karin
Slaughter and narrated
by Wayne Knight, was
named the Best Fiction
Audiobook, and
The Good Rat
written by Jimmy
Breslin and narrated
byRichard M. Davidson,
Richard Mover, and
Kaipo Schwab was named
the Best Nonfiction
Audiobook.
Other BFA finalists
published by BBC
Audiobooks America
include Blindness
by Jose Saramago, and
Life Class by
Pat Barker, both in
the Fiction category.
Named in honor of
America's most
cherished
publisher/printer, the
Benjamin Franklin
Awards™ recognize
excellence=2 0in
independent publishing
and are bestowed by
the Independent Book
Publishers
Association.
Publications, grouped
by genre, are judged
on editorial and
design merit by top
practitioners in each
field. The awards were
presented atthe
Roosevelt Hotel, New
York City.
On May 29th, 2009, in
a ceremony at the New
York Historical
Society in New York
City, the Audio
Publishers Association
named The
Odyssey
by Homer, narrated by
a full cast, as an
award winner for Best
Audio Drama in its
2009 Audies®
competition. These are
the industry's top
awards and the only
awards in the United
States devoted
entirely to honoring
spoken word
entertainment.
Additional Audie®-nominated
titles, published
under the BBC
Audiobooks America
company imprints, BBC
Audio and BBC Radio,
include: Tales
from the Perilous
Realm by J.R.R.
Tolkien (Audio Drama),
Martin
Misunderstood by
Karin Slaughter
(Humor), Buying In
by Rob Walker
(Nonfiction), and
Mismatch by Tami
Hoag (Romance).
Finalists in 31
categories were
considered for the
2009 Audies® based on
content, production
quality, packaging,
and narration. More
than 1000 entries were
submitted for
consideration in 2008.
BBC Audiobooks
America is a leading
publisher of
bestselling
single-voice and
full-cast dramatized
audiobooks. BBC
Audiobooks America
has a library of
more than 3,00 0
audio titles
available under its
Sound Library, BBC
Radio Collection,
and Chivers Audio
Books institutional
imprints and has won
multiple Audie
Awards, including
Audiobook of the
Year in 2006, for
The Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy:
The Tertiary Phase.
BBC Audiobooks
America distributes
product to libraries
across North America
and to consumers via
Perseus
Distribution. For
more information
about BBC Audiobooks
America, visit our
website:
BBCAudiobooksAmerica.com.
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June 8:
***THE WRITERS PLACE SCREENPLAY CONTEST FINALIST
ANNOUNCEMENT***
It is with much pleasure The Writers Place announces the
finalists for the
full-length and teleplay/short screenplay contest for the
November 2008 through
April 2009 competition period. Admittedly, this selection was
difficult – to say
the least. Many finely crafted scripts were submitted, however,
the following,
in the view of our readers, excelled. The order in which the
below screenplays
and authors are listed is no indication of preference.
FULL-LENGTH SCREENPLAYS
War in the Shadows – Daniel Payne
Fin Chaser – Maria Cozzi
The Next Big Thing – Peter McArdle
Severed – Erick Ziegler
Benazir – Muhammad Ali Hasan
Duet – Pamela Wielgus-Kwon
The Zoo – Pamela Wielgus-Kwon
Uncommon Denominator – David Termuhlen
Bless Me, Father – D
avid Termuhlen
One Story for My Brother – Rudy Tavarez
Frozen Fire – Paul Pawlowski
Running Gun – Mike Bencivenga
Friends and Romans – Gregg Greenberg
Panacea – Kent Hastings
Holiday Mix-Up – Christopher Acosta
Traces of You – Matthew Karges
Maiden Flight – Tom Jannetta
Dazzle Land – Steven Schoen & James Loos
Shadow Selves – Gavin Cruickshank
Doctor Sunshine – Lauren Uzdienski
Kheng Kheng Crocodile – Donna Lisa
Hallowed Ground – Maurizio Marmorstein
Lucky Eddie – Rusty Rhodes
Dana’s Inferno – Andrew Bailey
Dr. Sky: The Relationship Guy – Gregory Schwartz
TELEPLAY/SHORT SCREENPLAYS
Rupert and the Flying Weasel – Katarzyna Kochany
Dragon Tales: A Special Job – Katarzyna Kochany
Want – Steven Karageanes
The Wait of Our Discontent – Juli Lasselle
Salvaging – Joseph Lyons
The Office: The Paper Cut – Gregory Heitmann
Rebound – Gavin Cruickshank
PSYCH: You Can’t Spellcheck ‘Yippie-Ki-Yay’ – Lee Stewart
Acts of Witness – Annie Grosshans
30 Rock: Netwars – Will Dorney
My Daddy the Monster Hunter – James Butler
The Office: Going Green – Adam Perrotta
Competition winners (1st, 2nd, 3rd & honorable mentions) in both
the full-length
and teleplay/short categories will be announced on July 1, 2009.
Congratulations and good luck to our finalists.=2
0To all contestants who were not
selected for finalist standing, do not become disheartened. KEEP
WRITING!
***************2009 STIMUS PACKAGE PRICE
BUSTER!!!****************
$395
************WORK WITH TOP FILM COACH ON YOUR
SCRIPT!!!***********
University of Southern California professor and screenwriting
coach, Paula
Brancato, will read and provide script consultation to members
of The Writers
Place. Send us your script or film package: Professor Brancato
will provide
production advice and industry coverage, plus one-on-one phone
consultation.
Brancato has raised over $50 mm for independent film and
entertainment projects,
collaborating with major studios, television networks, and
independent
production companies and taking hundreds of scripts through the
development
process. She brings 15+ years of industry-wide experience to
bear on elements of
story, market positioning, packaging and financing as well as
the detailed
aspects of craft (structure, technique, etc.). Brancato teaches
the USC
Screenwriting thesis class, as well as The Business of The
Business: How to Get
Your Script sold.
Non-member script or filmmaker consultation: $495.
DISCOUNT for TWP Friends and Members: $395.
Additional information at:
http://www.thewritersplace.org/script_consultation.shtml
FEEDBACK WITH
IN TWO WEEKS! Please mail script, $395 check, and your
contact
information to:
Paula Brancato
The Writers Place
525 East 72nd Street #18A
New York, NY 10021
June 5:
Writers At Work...
 Daniyal
Mueenuddin wrote...In Other Rooms, Other Wonders...
"Three or four years ago I started sending stories to magazines
and received several rather cutting notes of dismissal. One
summer day I found an accceptance from Zoetrope. There's a
picture of me, taken just at that moment, in which I look
poleaxed and goofy and overwhelmingly happy. Soon after the
story came out, an editor at Penguin asked to see more of my
work. That brought me to an agent, who auctioned the book."
June 3:
Writers On Writing...
 Stephen
Lovely wrote...Irreplacable...
"I think the main thing was being patient during all those years
when I really had nothing to show for all my work. Other writers
were publishing and getting awards and prizes. I sequestered
myself and just concentrated on my book, putting aside any
immediate need for reward or encouragement or anything like
that."
June 1:
The Sami Rohr Prize For Jewish Literature...
Sana Krasikov...One More Year (Spiegel & Grau) $100,000.
Dalia Sofer...The September Of Shiraz (Ecco) $25,000.
www.jewishbookcouncil.org
May 29:
My Favorite Books...
 Justin
Kaplan wrote...Mr. Clemens And Mark Twain...
THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA
FIVE WEEKS IN A BALLOON
SHERLOCK HOLMES
ROBINSON CRUSOE
SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON
LORD OF THE FLIES
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
BARTLETT"S FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
FLAUBERT AND MADAME BOVARY
EMINENT VICTORIANS
REVEILLE IN WASHINGTON
THE REASON WHY
ADOLPHE
THE RED NOTEBOOK
PORTRAIT OF ZELIDE
May 27:
Writers At Work...
Ralph Ellison wrote...Shadow And Act...
"I'm in my old agony again trying to write a novel. I've got
some ideas that excite me and a few scenes and characters, but
the rest is coming like my first pair of long pants--slow as
hell. Never mind, I'll get it out, it just takes time to do
anything worthwhile."
May 25:
Writers On Writing...
 Leonard
S. Bernstein wrote...The Official Guide To Wine Snobbery...
"There Is nothing more difficult than writing a story, simply
because the writer begins with nothing, He has a blank sheet of
paper, a typewriter, and an idea. Nothing is started; there is
no format, no procedure. He must bring it all forth from a
vacuum."
May 22:
Good morning Jim,
Thank you for your daily pick of Lynn Grabhorn’s Excuse Me,
Your Life Is Waiting, now with a new cover. Lynn Grabhorn was
the first to reveal that the power of feelings is what
unconsciously shapes and molds every moment of every day. In her
ground-breaking book Grabhorn shows that paying attention to
feelings—rather than positive thinking, or sweat and strain, or
good or bad luck, is the way to change your life, make dreams
come true, and create the kind of life you really want to live.
Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting was on the New York Times
Bestseller List and sold over a half-million in hard cover
alone. Lynn began her professional life in advertising in New
York City, she founded and directed an audiovisual educational
publishing company in Los Angeles and ran a mortgage-brokerage
firm in Washington, D.C. She died in 2004.
=0 A
Lynn’s book has changed many lives and continues to influence
young lives; Sebastian Oddo wrote about the influence this book
had on his life in Excuse Me, College Is Now with co-author
Doreen Banaszak. We have two other titles that have been
inspired by Lynn’s book,
Excuse Me, Your Life Is NOW by Doreen Banaszak and Excuse Me,
Your God Is Waiting by Michelle Prosser.
As always thank you for featuring books that we feel essential
for body, mind and spirit.
Warm regards, Sara Sgarlat
May 20:
Writers On Writing...
Irwin Shaw wrote...The Young Lions...
"The writer has only one obligation--to stay alive and try to
please himself."
May 18:
Writers On Writing...
 Paddy
Chayefsky wrote...Marty...
"The whole labor of writing is to make it look like it just came
off the top of your head."
May 15:
My Favorite Books...
Robert Coles wrote...Children Of Crisis...
WAR AND PEACE
MIDDLEMARCH
May 13:
Writers on Writing...
 Dennis
Palumbo wrote... Writing From The Inside Out...
In addition to the usual problems of talent, craft and
imagination, what makes the profession of writing so difficult
is that it requires constancy.
You have to do it every day, with consistancy and will, just
like any other occupation...Anybody can be a writer for one
day."
May 11:
Writers At Work...
Katherine Porter wrote...Ship Of Fools...
"Oh God! how I have to beat myself over the head to get started
every morning."
May 8:
Writers On Writing...
 Henrick
Ibsen wrote ...An Enemy Of The People...
"A dramatist's business is not to answer questions, but merely
to ask them."
May 6:
My Favorite Movies...
 Frank
Rich...Columnist, the New York Times...
NORTH BY NORTHWEST
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
DR. STRANGELOVE
JULES AND JIM
BLOWUP
BONNIE AND CLYDE
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
May 4:
My Favorite Musicals...
Julie Andrews wrote...Home...
WEST SIDE STORY
CAROUSEL
GUYS AND DOLLS
GYPSY
MY FAIR LADY
May 1:
Writers At Work...
Stephen King wrote...The Shining...
"Once I start work on a project, I don't stop and I don't slow
down unless I absolutely have to. If I don't write every day,
the characters begin to stale off in my mind--they begin to seem
like characters instead of real people."
April 29:
Writers On Writing...
 Margaret
Mitchell wrote...Gone With The Wind...
"My time is not my own. It has not been my own since Gone With
Wind was published."
April 27:
My Favorite Books...
Charlotte Bronte wrote...Jane Eyre...
THE ADVENTURES OF WALTER SCOTT
ARABIAN NIGHTS
THE POETRY OF LORD BYRON
April 24:
Writers At Work...
 Arthur
M. Schlesinger, Jr.... wrote...Journals 1952-2000...
"I have never learned how to use research assistants (and doubt
whether they are of great use in my kind of history, since you
can never program an assistant to know what may suggest a scene
or an insight to oneself)".
April 22:
Writers On Writing...
Ezra Brudino wrote...The Tether...
The Jewish American novel "must be a problem novel, and its
essential problems must be identity and assimilation."
April 20:
My Favorite Movies...
 Hugh
Hefner...Founder-Publisher, PLAYBOY...
CASABLANCA
MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON
IT"S A WONDERFUL LIFE
42ND STREET
FOOTLIGHT PARADE
& THE MUSICALS OF...
FRED ASTAIRE
GINGER ROGERS
ALICE FAYE
BETTY GRABLE
BUSBY BERKELEY
April 17:
Writers At Work...
Truman Capote wrote...In Cold Blood
"I'm always quite nervous at the beginning of my workday. It
takes me a great deal of time to get started. Once I get
started, it gradually calms down a bit, but I'll do anything to
keep postponing...Anyway, one way or another, I manage to write
about four hours a day."
April 15:
Writers On Writing...
 Tennessee
Williams wrote...Outcry...
"Economic security is a kind of death, I think, and it can come
to you in a storm of royalty checks beside a kidney-shaped pool
in Beverly Hills or anywhere else at all that is removed from
the conditions that made you an artist, if that's what you are
or were or intended to be. Ask anyone who has experienced the
kind of success I am talking about--what good is it?"
April 13:
My Favorite Books...
Anita Shreve wrote...The Pilots Wife
ETHAN FROME
April 10:
Writers at Work
Isaac Asimov wrote...Caves Of Steel...
"My only ritual is to sit close enough to the typewriter so
that my fingers touch the keys."
April 8:
My Favorite Books...
Anita Shreve wrote...The Pilots Wife...
ETHAM FROMME
April 6:
Writer's On Writing...
 John
O'Hara wrote...Butterfield 8...
"I believe...that the writer who loafs after he has made a
financial success is confessing that the money was all he was
after in the first place."
April 3:
Writer's On Writing...
 Ernest
Hemingway wrote...The Old Man And The Sea...
"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark
Twain called Huckleberry Finn...It's the best book we've had.
All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before.
There has been nothing as good since."
April 1:
My Favorite Authors...
Charles Dickens wrote...Oliver Twist...
HENRY FIELDING
TOBIAS SMOLLETT
DANIEL DEFOE
CERVANTES
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
March 30:
My Favorite Books...
Jenny Bond wrote...Who The Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?...
EMMA
THE GREAT GATSBY
ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
POSSESSION
WUTHERING HEIGHTS
March 27:
 The
title... From Here To Eternity...was taken from the Rudyard
Kipling poem "Gentlemen-Rankers.
March 25:
My Favorite Books...
Jane Austen wrote...Pride And Prejudice...
HISTORY OF SIR CHARLES GRANDISON
March 23:
Writer's On Writing...
Mary Shelley wrote...Frankenstein...
"It is not singular that, as the daughter of two persons of
distinguished literary celebrity, I should very early in life
have thought of writing. I had a clearer pleasure than this,
which was the formation of castles in the air--the indulging in
waking dreams...
March 20:
 Norman
Mailer's favorite ten American novels he read during his
freshman year at Harvard..."and gave me the desire, which has
never gone away, to be a writer, an American writer."
USA
HUCKLEBERRY FINN
STUDS LONIGAN
LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL
THE GRAPES OF WRATH
THE GREAT GATSBY
THE SUN ALSO RISES
APPOINTMENT TO SAMARRA
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
MOBY DICK
March 18:
Writer's At Work...
Hugh Nissenson wrote...My Own Ground...
"You have to trim away the fat, achieve more with less."
March 16:
Writer's On Writing...
 E.L.
Doctorow wrote...The Book Of Daniel...
"Do The least amount of research you can get away with, and no
less."
March 13:
The first winner of the National Jewish Book Award For
Fiction...
1949...Howard Fast...My Glorious Brothers..
March 11:
Writer's On Writing...
 Saul
Bellow wrote...The Adventures Of Augie March...
"The restraint of the first two books had driven me mad...I
hadn't become a writer to tread the straight and narrow. I am an
American, Chicago born--that somber city--and go at things as I
have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my
own way."
March 9:
Writer's At Work...
Eria Jong wrote...The Fear Of Flying...
"Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all
down--revising and embellishing as I go."
March 6:
Jim's Notes...
Thrillerfest...Sept...NYC.. .www.thrillerfest.org
Santa Barbara Writers Conference...March 13-15...
www.sbwriters.com
March 4:
Writer's on Writing...
 Olen
Steinhauer wrote...The Tourist...
"It wasn't until I picked up John le Carre's The Spy Who Came In
From The Cold that it became clear how spy fiction can encompass
all the social commentary, realism, philosophy and fine writing
of literature yet still maintain the vigorous pacing that hooks
an audience."
March 2:
Writer's At Work...
Brian Douglas Coyle wrote...The Devil's Sanctuary?"
"I have general ideas on paper for 12-15 books. I rank them in
the order I want to write them. I usually have a title selected
or at least a temporary title and plot. When I write, I do a
"spreadsheet" with the basic characters, the story-line and how
things will develop and end. I know the flow of the plot and
where it is going but "tweak" it along the way as better ideas
come to me."
Feb. 27:
Writer's On Writing...
 Alice
James wrote...The Diary of Alice James...
"I think that if I get into the habit of writing a bit about
what happens, or rather doesn't happen, I may lose a little of
the sense of loneliness and desolation which abides with me."
Feb. 25:
Rudyard Kipling was the first English writer to
receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.
Feb. 23:
Writer's At Work...
 Plutarch
wrote...Essays...
"I treat the narrative as a kind of mirror and try to fine a way
to arrange my life and assisimate it to the virtues of my
subjects. Could one find a more effective means of moral
inprovement?"
Feb. 20:
Writer's At Work...
James Jones wrote...Whistle...
After I get up it takes me an hour and a half of fiddling around
before I can get up the courage and nerve to go to work. I smoke
half a pack of cigerettes, drink six or seven cups of coffee,
read over what I wrote the day before. Finally ther's no further
excuse. I go to the typewriter. Four to six hours of it."
Feb. 18:
My Favorite Books...
Gretel Ehrlich wrote...The Solace Of Open Spaces...
THE UTA
POEMS OF THE LAST T'ANG
PIEDRA de SOL ("Sunstone")
SNOW COUNTRY
THOUSAND CRANES
THE TALE OF GENJI
THE PLAGUE
LYRICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAYS OF ALBERT CAMUS
NOTEBOOKS OF ALBERT CAMUS
THE PLUMED SERPENT
TWILIGHT IN ITALY
MORNINGS IN MEXICO
CANNERY ROW
THE PRACTICE OF THE WILD
GRIEFWORK
THE TUGMAN'S PASSAGE
Feb. 16:
Writer's On Writing...
Tiffany Baker wrote...The Lucky Giant of Aberdeen County...
"I think writing is a lot like cooking--you throw things in a
pot, you have a recipe to follow, but if you follow it too
closely, it doesn't come out quite right. Sometimes you need to
throw in that crazy spice. You need the proper contrasts to make
the flavors pop."
Feb. 13:
My Favorite Books...
Rita Dove wrote...Thomas And Beulah...
HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON
JULIUS CAESAR
ROMEO AND JULIET
HAMLET
A TREASURY OF BEST-:LOVED POEMS
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN
RETURN TO MY NATIVE LAND
THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET
TROPIC OF CANCER
INVISIBLE MAN
GIOVANNI'S ROOM
THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON
OMEROS
BELOVED
Feb. 11:
Writer's On Writing...
 Wally
Lamb wrote...The Hour I First Believed...
"Writing a novel is like taking a sledge hammer to a stained
glass portrait of yourself and then putting all the pieces back
together to create a new picture."
Feb. 9:
Writer's At Work...
Sarah Sims wrote...The Face...
"I work with four elements; plot concept, characters, setting
and theme. The plot concept usually shows up first, then the
other pieces either fall into line...or I give them a shove."
Feb. 6:
Writer's At Work...
Jo Walton wrote...Half a Crown...
 "I
wanted to write mysteries where everything wasn't put back in
the box at the end. I've always wanted to subvert the way
mysteries have these absurb murders as interruptions, and the
right person is always brought to justice and order is
restored."
Feb. 4:
WHITING WRITERS' AWARDS, 2008...
FICTION
Mischa Berlinski
Manuel Munoz
Laleh Khadivi
Lysley Tenorio
Benjamin Percy
PLAYS
Dael Orlandersmith
POETRY
Julie Sheehan
Douglas Kearney
Rick Hilles
NONFICTION
Donovan Hohn
Each writer received $50,000 from the Mrs. Giles Whiting
Foundation.
Feb. 2:
Writer's On Writing...
Virginia Wolf wrote...The Waves...
 "How
tired I am of stories, how tired I am of phrases that come down
beautifully with all their feet on the ground!...What delights
me...is the confusion, the height, the indifference, and the
fury."
Jan. 30:
THE LIFE OF HOLLYWOOD
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's first true love was movies
Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times
“Everything I learned about love, I learned from the movies,”
says Hugh Hefner, here in the entrance of his mansion.
Email Picture
'Everything I learned about love I learned from the movies,' he
says.
By Geoff Boucher
January 4, 2009
"You've caught me with my pants on," Hugh Hefner said with a sad
smirk. There are days (or entire decades) when Hefner greets the
midday sun in silk pajamas and a robe, but on this particular
December afternoon, well, the playboy just wasn't in the mood.
Hefner had arrived back at his 29-room Holmby Hills mansion
after attending the funeral of Bettie Page, the pin-up queen,
and he was still wearing his mourner's jacket as he sat and
slowly sipped from a bottle of Diet Pepsi in the hush of a
downstairs library. Hefner considered Page a friend and fellow
pioneer of sorts on the old frontier of American sex culture.
Now, like so many others in Hefner's long journey, she is gone.
"We knew it was coming and there comes a point in the illness. .
. ." His voice trailed off and then, adjusting his gold bunny
cuff links, he smiled. "We're not really talking about Bettie
Page here today."
Related
Photos: Hugh Hefner: Playboy STORY: Playboy playmates and the
power of invisibilityMore Related:
Hugh Hefner and the playmates dish on super heroes
Christie Hefner to resign from Playboy
Jacket Copy: Hugh Hefner's 20th century
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No, but the legacy of desire -- as well as the desire for legacy
-- are core concerns for Hefner these days. He has arguably
never been more famous, but the glossy centerfold citadel of his
empire, Playboy magazine, has struggled, and Hefner, 82, seems
most at ease talking about the past and his consuming passion --
no, not that one. According to Hef, Hollywood was actually his
first true obsession.
"Everything I learned about love, I learned from the movies,"
Hefner said. "The reality is because I was not shown affection,
I escaped into an alternate universe, and it came right out of
the movies. Love for me is defined almost exclusively in terms
of romantic love as defined by the films of my childhood."
There's a strong chance that Hefner finally will see a version
of himself as a child up on the screen; a long-elusive
biographical film is ramping up and, according to Hefner,
production could be underway in the next few months. Brian
Grazer is the producer, Robert Downey Jr. is keenly interested
in the starring role and Brett Ratner has been lined up to
direct. Hefner, a devotee of Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges,
seemed uncertain about the "Rush Hour" auteur.
"It's going to be a very curious change of pace for him . . .
but I believe in Brian," Hefner said. "The one thing I would
want the film to be is something other than a light comedy, to
have something to say and express something about the change in
social sexual values. You know, Brian made a comment that I was
the only man who had made love to over a thousand women and they
all still liked him. And I do take some pride, in fact, that I
remain friends with the majority of former wives and
girlfriends. I am a romantic."
Perhaps, but this is the graceless age of Internet porn and
Hefner's magazine has been receding. It celebrated its 55th
anniversary in 2008 but, in an unfortunate coincidence, gave
pink slips to 55 employees in October. If the glossy print life
is stepping down, Hefner's lifelong fascination for film is
moving up among his priorities. The biopic will be co-produced
by Playboy's Alta Loma Entertainment, his production company,
which is redoubling its efforts in Hollywood. The company was
started in the '70s, and after years of making soft-core porn,
was a limited partner in August's " The House Bunny," a racy but
PG-13 farce that starred Anna Faris and Colin Hanks.
Alta Loma is following that up with the R-rated "Miss March," a
comedy about a guy who wakes up from a coma to find his
girlfriend as one of Hefner's playmates. It hits 2,000 theaters
in March with Fox distributing. There's also talk of a
live-action version of Little Annie Fanny, the air-headed and
bubble-breasted Playboy comic-strip character created for
Playboy in 1962 by Mad magazine alums Harvey Kurtzman and Will
Elder.
If it all sounds sophomoric, well . . . Hef, like his magazine,
has a penchant for flipping between cartoon lewdness and lofty
parlor-room pursuits.
Last month, a limo whisked him over to USC where, for the 13th
year, he gave a lecture to a cinema censorship class that he
seeded with a $100,000 donation. In 1995 he also gave $1.5
million to endow USC's Hugh M. Hefner Chair for the Study of
American Film (held by film historian Richard B. Jewell). He has
made major donations to UCLA as well -- $1 million in 2006 to
the school's Film & Television Archive, establishing the Hugh M.
Hefner American Film program. And according to Dick Rosenzweig,
Hefner's longtime lieutenant who runs Alta Loma along with Jason
Burns, the mogul has quietly funded a number of documentary
productions and film preservation efforts. Hefner, who has a
"Maltese Falcon" statuette and a bust of Boris Karloff in his
bedroom, said all of it is a valentine to his youth.
"It's my way of trying to pass along some little part of it," he
said. "Movies will never have the same impact that they did when
I was a kid. I was fortunate to have been born in 1926 and to
have grown up during the Great Depression and war years, to have
lived through almost the perfect time frame. For me the boy
really is the father of the man."
The checks written by an aging rich man, though, are gestures,
not commitments. Better proof of his celluloid fixation is the
crypt he has purchased; when Hefner gives up the ghost, his
well-used body will spend eternity in L.A.'s Westwood Memorial
Park, next to Marilyn Monroe, a woman he never met, except in
the dim light of the movie palace.
Childhood influence
Hugh Marston Hefner, born in Chicago on April 9, 1926, grew up
on the far west side of town, where the prairie was still part
of the horizon.He was a ringleader for the local kids, creating
and presiding over elaborate games and drawing an
autobiographical comic book called "School Daze" that starred
his friends as the supporting cast. He looks back on it as his
first success in publishing. At age 16 he also drafted his pals
to make a horror movie. His defining ritual as a youngster was
taking the streetcar on Grand Avenue ("And," he says, "it was
grand") to the movies. Some days he sat through a double feature
in the afternoon and then another in the evening. Afterward he
would carefully record every movie title in his diary.
"The movies, other than family, were the major influence of my
childhood," Hefner said. "I was in a very typical Midwestern,
Methodist home with a lot of repression and not much
demonstrative expression of emotion. My escape was the darkened
theater."
When it comes to relationships, some men spend their life
looking for their mother; Hefner has been searching for leading
ladies -- sometimes two or more at a time, like those
double-feature days.
"And I think my fascination with blonds is directly connected to
the impact that the platinum blonds had in the movies of the
1930s," he said in a clinical tone. " Jean Harlow, Alice Faye,
all of those Busby Berkeley showgirls. You can't go wrong. Well,
you probably could, but what fun."
For decades, movie screenings have been a tradition at the
Playboy mansion. Hefner used to screen two new films every week
but, in the 1990s, he surrendered to the fact that the
contemporary cinema output just doesn't yield 104 good movies a
year. Now, Friday nights are for new films ( "Frost/Nixon" and "Gran
Torino" were recent selections) while Sunday nights are for the
classics (he screened "Mrs. Miniver" and "I Was a Male War
Bride" last month). Hefner devotes "an afternoon I really can't
afford" each week to preparing notes for his introductions of
the vintage fare.
On Mondays, it's Manly Night, in which the audience is smaller
and older -- mostly Hefner's circle of longtime pals, people
like tough-guy actor Robert Culp and Ronald Borst, a leading
collector of old horror film posters. In recent weeks, they have
watched the old "Flash Gordon" serials, which, of course, Hefner
remembers in sexual terms. "The women I have been most enamored
with over the years," he says, "looked very much like Dale
Arden."
The old movies stay the same, but the mansion audience doesn't.
"The group changes by and large only by making new friends and
having old friends die," Hefner said. "Don Adams and Mel Torme
used to be part of the group. . . . This literally is a second
home for a great many of my friends. I think on my passing a lot
of my friends are going to be lost socially."
Refining an image
The Playboy mansion and its master have become symbols of
refined debauchery, and Hefner has carefully cultivated that
imagery. "The Girls Next Door," an E! channel show that brought
cameras into the mansion (à la "The Osbournes") to record
Hefner's relationship with a trio of curvy blond girlfriends,
began its fifth season in October. A sixth season is on the way
and, after much-publicized strife, there is more public interest
than ever in the strange love rectangle. There's also "Mr.
Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream," the biography by
Steven Watts, who was given unrestricted access to the tycoon's
vast archive of self, which includes journals and scrapbooks
dating to his youth.
Hefner has a deep voice, an impish grin and the small, delicate
hands of man whose mansion has Jergens cherry-almond lotion in
every one of its bathrooms. He is not as tall as he used to be
and he hunches forward, but the only moment he looks frail is
when standing next to the bare-breasted statue of Barbi Benton
that lords over his library.
The library shelves are dominated with books on Hollywood
history, and it's surprising, perhaps, that Hefner hasn't put
himself in their pages in a bigger way since moving west in
1971. Like Howard Hughes, he could have bought a spot in the
dream factory, but Hefner has mostly been content with just
watching.
The great exception to that was his unlikely role as a key
producer for Roman Polanski's grim and gory 1971 "The Tragedy of
Macbeth." A top executive at the Playboy Club in London had
championed the idea of Hefner getting involved in the project,
which became Polanski's first film after the 1969 murder of his
pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, during the Manson family attacks.
During production, the movie was lagging behind schedule and the
company that had insured the film was pushing for Polanski to be
replaced.
"I told them, 'Polanski is our star, he's the reason we're
making the movie,' so we gave up the insurance policy and I
covered the film myself," Hefner said. "It was a fascinating
film, flawed but fascinating. It was directly related to the
murders. There was a moment in which during the murder scene
that he misaddressed the actress as 'Sharon.' It was such a dark
and cathartic project. I only wish I had produced his next film,
'Chinatown.' . . ."
But Hefner's attentions in the 1970s were the massive success of
his magazine. The man who started a vast empire with $8,000 and
a 1950s vision of a smoking-jacket approach to smut doesn't
dwell on regrets, but he might have made more Hollywood films if
he could do it all over. Still, in his mansion, the flicker of
old Hollywood looks a lot like twilight memories.
"So much of my life traces back directly to my childhood. Any
time I go to Chicago, I always go back and walk the old
neighborhood. Much of it is still there. The house I grew up in
is still there, but the neighborhood has grown up. When you go
back to your old neighborhood and your old home, everything
seems smaller than you remember. The only thing that was larger
than I remembered it was the movie theater. It seemed bigger
than ever."
Jan. 28:
...Mickey Rourke is 56 years old, but, he said: "If you
write that you won't be my friend. I don't tell my age."
...NYT, 11/30/2008...by Pat Jordan...
Jan. 26:
My Favorite Books...
 Truman
Capote wrote...In Cold Blood...
THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE
MY ANTONIA
THE COLLECTED SHORT STORIES OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
OUT OF AFRICA
WINESBURG, OHIO
COLLECTED POEMS OF ROBERT FROST
Jan. 16:
Writer's On Writing...
Albert Camus wrote...The Plague...
"Those who write clearly have readers; those who write obscurely
have commentators."
Jan. 14:
Writer's At Work...
 Gore
Vidal wrote...Burr...
"I write in different styles because I hear different voices in
my head. It would be boring to have always the same voice, point
of view."
Jan. 12:
My Favorite Books...
Art Buchwald wrote...I Never Danced At The White House...
CATCH-22
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE
Jan. 9:
Writer's At Work...
 Nat
Hentoff wrote...Listen To The Stories...
Read what you've written aloud---you'll learn the rhythms that
work for you."
Jan. 7:
Writer's On Writing...
Vladimir Nabokov wrote...Lolita...
"Caress the detail, the divine detail."
Jan. 5:
My Favorite Books...
 Guy
Davenport wrote...The Geography of Imagination...
THE GOLDEN APPLE
MOLLOY
HUMPHRY CLINKER
IN PARENTHESIS
TRAVELS IN ARABIAN DESERTA
OUT OF AFRICA
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