Author Archives: maedez

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About maedez

Writer, biographer, poet. History nerd, silent movie maven. Punk rocker, amateur baker, bookworm. Cricket fan, Scotch drinker, craft beer snob.

A Year in Books/Day 26: Door Wide Open

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  • Title: Door Wide Open Jack Kerouac & Joyce Johnson A Beat Love Affair in Letters 1957-1958
  • Author: Introduction and commentary by Joyce Johnson
  • Year Published: 2000 (Penguin Books)

    Signature of Jack Kerouac

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  • Year Purchased: 2003/2004
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: When 21-year-old novelist Joyce Johnson (then Glassman) embarked on a relationship with Jack Kerouac, she met all of the surface requirements of non-conformity. In her letters, she made a calculated, mighty effort to match her peripatetic lover’s passionate, friendly detachment; as if writing it down made it so. But her commentary, written in her sixties, reveals the truth of a young woman desperately trying to break free of the gendered emotional conventions of the 1950s.
  • Motivation: I love the intimacy, and sense of immediacy, found in the personal letters of famous people (especially writers and artists). When the correspondence is between one of the leading-and most controversial-icons of his time and one of the few women artistically associated with the Beat Generation, then I’m extra intrigued.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 45: “The need and love Jack finally declared obliterated from my mind any consideration of the consequences of the earthquake. Nor did I take sufficient note of the fact that Jack had written this letter, so different in tone from all the others, during one of the few periods in recent years when he was completely sober. I only knew there suddenly seemed to be a profound change in our relationship. Here were the feelings, the “real” feelings, he had always held back.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8

A Year in Books/Day 25: Beginning Again

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  • Title: Beginning Again An Autobiography of the Years 1911 to 1918
  • Author: Leonard Woolf
  • Year Published: 1963/This Edition 1975 (A Harvest/HBJ Book)
  • Year Purchased: 2002/2003
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: The third installment of Woolf’s 5-volume autobiography covers the early years of his marriage to budding novelist Virginia Stephen and the start of their famous Hogarth Press. Famous spouse Leonard Woolf gave more than a name to his famous wife. He was complex, fascinating and incredibly well-respected in more than one field.
  • Motivation: Although I am a fan of Virginia’s writing, and find her character and life more than a bit riveting, I have always been drawn to the deep, intellectual and exacting nature of her husband. He was also a damn fine writer.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 16: “I was born an introspective intellectual, and the man or woman who is by nature addicted to introspection gets into the habit, after the age of 15 or 16, of feeling himself, often intensely, as ‘I’ and yet at the same time of seeing himself out of the corner of his eye as ‘not I’, a stranger acting a part upon a stage.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

[Mae’s Writing Days] Cocooned by Creativity

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I’m very particular when it comes to the ordering of my writing room. I’ve been back in my studio for nearly two weeks, and have been spending a lot of my spare-and not so spare-time tweaking the hell out of my surroundings. I’m not interested in perfection, which is too bad; that would be remarkably easier to achieve! Oh, I have all of the big basics in place-modern IKEA desk, vintage chair, shelves, design and storage space. What I’m looking for is more along the lines of the “I’ll know it when I see it/feel it” school of aesthetic and psychological satisfaction. I’m creeping closer to that amorphous goal by the day, one kooky tchotchke or inspirational magazine clipping at a time. Anything more committal and I feel like I’m slogging through molasses. My goal? To see a strange, beautiful and rotating array of images and words, books and art whenever I glance up from my keyboard, fingers fleetingly paused mid-stroke before they fall, deftly yet heavily, in service to another sentence. To be cocooned by creativity. That’s happiness.

 

A Year in Books/Day 24: Beneath the Diamond Sky

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  • Title: Beneath the Diamond in the Sky Haight Ashbury 1965-1970
  • Author: Barney Hoskyns
  • Year Published: 1997 (Simon & Schuster Editions)
  • Year Purchased: 2001/2002
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: A history of the ascent of the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco into the world’s greatest, if short-lived, hippie mecca. It is equal parts text and photos.
  • Motivation: Although my Mom was a hippie, and I have a natural kinship for this subject, I bought the book for a friend then living in the Bay Area. I decided to read it before popping it into the mail. I did, and ended up keeping it for my collection!
  • Times Read: 2 (with another reading on the horizon)
  • Random Excerpt/Page 31: “Kesey, thirty-one, married with three children, had already begun to assert himself as the charismatic ringleader of an anarchic post-beatnik scene around Palo Alto. A rugged, curly-haired farm boy from Oregon, he had arrived at Stanford University on a creative-writing fellowship in 1958, later moving into the artsy-boho enclave that was Perry Lane and helping himself to samples of LSD and mescaline during the Veterans’ Hospital tests. It was while working as a night attendant on the hospital’s psych ward that he conceived the idea for ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’.
  • Happiness Scale: 9
    Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, California, USA

    Image via Wikipedia

     

A Year in Books/Day 23: Leave Her to Heaven

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  • Title: Leave Her to Heaven
  • Author: Ben Ames Williams
  • Year Published: 1945/This Edition-1947 (The Sun Dial Press)
  • Year Purchased: 1990/1991
  • Source: The Columbus Public Library, Library Sale
  • About: This melodramatic tale shows the unstable Ellen Berent’s twisted devolution from lovely, beguiling and charming young woman into a jealous, devious and vindictive murderess.
    English: Screenshot of Gene Tierney from the f...

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  • Motivation: I caught the 1945 film adaptation on television at 16. It stars the gorgeous, under-rated Gene Tierney, Vincent Price and Cornel Wilde. I found this book at the bottom of a pile of $1.00 clearance books at the annual library sale a couple of years later.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 72: “She knew better than Harland how serious this might be; nevertheless perversely she delayed to clean up their picnic ground; prolonging in every possible fashion these pregnant hours. She gathered the paper in which his lunch had been wrapped, burning it in the embers of the little fire, wetting down the ashes till not even steam arose.”
  • Happiness Scale: 6 (writing)/7 (plot)

Shopping for the Bookworm: Literary Pretties

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My preferred literary pretties for the week include pieces inspired by George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, Flannery O’Connor and Sylvia Plath.

George Bernard Shaw cuff bracelet by Unique Art Pendants
Virginia Woolf Pendant by Funcky Pop Art
Flannery O’Connor Necklace by Love Las Muertas Jewelry
Sylvia Plath hair pin by Sunny Raven Designs

A Year in Books/Day 22: I Like You

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  • Title: I Like You Hospitality Under the Influence
  • Author: Amy Sedaris
  • Year Published: 2006 (Warner Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2006
  • Source: This was a Christmas gift from my lovely Mother.
  • About: A refreshingly fun, kooky entertaining guide full of peculiar crafts and seriously good recipes.
  • Motivation: I want to be Amy Sedaris when I grow up. Really, I think she’s the best. I also enjoy throwing anything-but-boring parties whenever I can pry myself from the keyboard.
  • Times Read: Cover-to-cover-1. As a cookbook-frequently.
  • Random Excerpt/Page 73: “Don’t question a lumberjack and never look one in the eye. Be polite when suggesting they remove their cleats, but be prepared if they don’t. I always have a clear path to the table, and another to the bathroom. Feeding lumberjacks can be very rewarding when you take care to follow all the necessary precautions.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10++
    English: Amy Sedaris book signing (Simple Time...

    Image via Wikipedia

     

[Mae’s Writing Days]-Faithless is what I am

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I’ve nearly forgotten that I’m a fiction writer. Oh, don’t misunderstand me: I’m as faithless as they come. I could never hold steady or true to that vocation, even though I get so taken up with a story that the world without disappears. I still stray. Every single time, satisfaction be damned. Continue reading →