Someone at Vanity Fair unearthed a short chapter of Truman Capote’s never-finished novel, Answered Prayers. Seems fitting.
Capote, Uncovered (courtesy of Vanity Fair)
[Truman Capote News] Answered Prayers
4
Tag Archives: Books
My Velveteen Chair, or: Why I’ve Given Up on the Idea of a Perfectly Curated Reading Nook
I’d like to think that I’m a relaxed, purposeful, and serene-looking reader, a leisurely woman out of a nineteenth-century painting. Cushioned in velvet and satin, a pile of books, a pot of tea, and a vase of flowers artfully arranged on an elegantly draped table near-to-hand. Like this, more or less:
Louise Tiffany Reading by Louis Comfort Tiffany, 1888
My delusions are so humble, aren’t they? The reality is a bit different. Okay, considerably different. For starters, it involves backaches and too much dog hair. I live in a sea of language, a blizzard of words. If I’m not writing, I’m reading. The former is done at the desk in my studio with neatness, solitude, and organization. The latter is a haphazard affair. I hunker down with a book or three in, on, or beside whatever can pass for a seat: my swinging sixties swivel chair; the bathtub; my too-lumpy bed; on the dining room floor; or, somewhat claustrophobically, on the couch crushed beneath a pile of scratchy dog paws and icy snouts. My solution? A dedicated reading space, of course!
We’ve been in our huge flat for 2 1/2 years, and my studio has been used as such from the get-go. Why am I so late to the party with this? I’ve always been a wallflower but this, this, is ridiculous. I spend far too much time on Pinterest to be ignorant of or immune to the sweet siren call of The Perfectly Curated Reading Nook. The concept makes my heart sing with girlish enthusiasm. The effort required to make this over-the-top idea come true? Not so much. In fact, it makes me think of this:
My girl Ophelia knows how I feel.
What’s a writer-reader with bohemian taste, an absurd imagination, and lazy tendencies to do in lieu of actual work? Drag an old chair that has been in the family for 40+ years to the middle of her studio and call it a day.
Before: Communing with the chair in the late 1970s.
The Gold Chair is older than I am. It’s now missing a few buttons and is slightly threadbare in spots; it reminds me of a passage in The Velveteen Rabbit (or How Toys Become Real) by Margery Williams: Continue reading
A Year in Books/Day 220: The Secret (No, Not That One)
- Title: The Secret The Strange Marriage of Annabella Milbanke and Lord Byron
- Author: Ashley Hay
- Year Published: 2000/This Edition: 2001 (Aurum Press Ltd)
- Year Purchased: 2002/2003
- Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
- About: This is way more interesting than the “self-help” book by Rhonda Byrne. It’s also real. We all know that Lord Byron (and his buddies) had some hellacious and salacious adventures. Carousing, hell-catting, what-have-you. They were a lot of things, but boring wasn’t one of them. With all of that knowledge in the back of our heads, you’d think that any biography focusing on his personal life couldn’t offer up an intriguing perspective. You’d be wrong, and thank goodness for that. History has certainly seen its share of romantic mismatches and marital disasters. The union between Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke deserves a fairly high position on any informal ranking. Lest you worry that The Secret is trashy tabloid-esque fodder with a historical spin, fear not! Hay has written a fine exploration, taken from the couple’s journals and correspondence, that gives her subjects a respectful, though not heavy, seriousness.
- Motivation: We always hear of Byron and his conquests, yet few words are devoted to the women he loved; and most of those are given over to his sister, not his wife. An entire book dedicated to the odd, brief relationship he had with the out-flanked Miss Milbanke? Oh, yes please.
- Times Read: 1
- Random Excerpt/Page 38: “At the same time, she became convinced that Byron was about to announce his engagement to someone else-to the young lady, in fact, whom he had told he wanted to see no more of Annabella’s poems. All the light, all the spark, went out of her and out of her effervescent summer: she told her aunt of this imminent announcement so definitely that Lady Melbourne took the idea to Byron as a fact, not a rumour, and he was at a loss to explain its origins or its vehemence.”
- Happiness Scale: 8 1/2
Portrait of Annabella Byron (nee Anne Isabella Milbanke) (1792-1860) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A Year in Books/Day 219: American Moderns
- Title: American Moderns Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century
- Author: Christine Stansell
- Year Published: 2000 (Metropolitan Books)
- Year Purchased: 2000
- Source: History Book Club
- About: American Moderns is one of my favourite non-fiction books. It was published on the edge of our own new century, and chronicles the birth and growing pains of the one then ending. The narrative focuses on the considerable contributions of the various bohemian elements that came to brilliant prominence in the promising light of this new era. Feminism, labor activism, and radical intellectualism, all action-oriented, fused together to form a progressive platform that, for the first time in America, allowed for a broad, increasingly inclusive, though still problematic, alternative to traditional and oppressive modes of being. These movements were peopled with characters worthy of grand, gritty fiction, including: Louise Bryant, Emma Goldman, John Reed, Hutchins Hapgood, Neith Boyce, Margaret Sanger, Randolph Bourne, Margaret Anderson, Max Eastman, Crystal Eastman, and Susan Glaspell. The resilience of the women is particularly striking. Stansell’s clear voice and excellent scholarship couldn’t be put to better use than they are here, in the complicated telling of this compelling, fractious, and momentous period of history.
- Motivation: I was thirteen or fourteen when I became interested in the history of activism and feminism. The only things that have changed since then are my knowledge and level of personal involvement in these areas. I also love the literature and pop culture of the earliest years of the twentieth century.
- Times Read: 3 or 4
- Random Excerpt/Page 28: “As women lingered at the edges of these urbane circles, they added a sense of themselves as heroines in a new story to bohemia’s increasing store of plots. Just as bohemian identity was intimately intertwined with its representation in print, so was being a New Woman: what one read shaped how one lived.”
- Happiness Scale: 10+++
Crystal Eastman was a noted anti-militarist, who helped found the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Hemingway Liked to Drink? Who Knew?
In case you were wondering, I didn’t type that with a straight face.
Hemingway’s Favorite Cocktail Recipes [Courtesy of Huff Post Books]
Which of these cocktails would you drink? I’ll take a Bailey, please.
The Dead Writers Round-Up: 14th-18th November
- Astrid Lindgren was born on 11/14/1907. “I have been very interested in labor movement. If I could have wished another life, I would have loved to be a pioneer woman in the beginning of labor movement.” (The Pippi Longstocking books)
- Booker T. Washington died on 11/14/1915. “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” (Up from Slavery; Working With the Hands)
- Marianne Moore was born on 11/15/1887. “If technique is of no interest to a writer, I doubt that the writer is an artist.” (Poems; Selected Poems; The Marianne Moore Reader) Continue reading
Quote
“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.”-Victor Hugo
A Year in Books/Day 218: Max Factor’s Hollywood Glamour
- Title: Max Factor’s Hollywood Glamour
- Author: Fred E. Basten (with Robert Salvatore & Paul A. Kaufman)
- Year Published: 1995 (W. Quay Hays)
- Year Purchased: 2003/2004
- Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
- About: Max Factor isn’t just a name on wands of mascara and tubes of lipstick found in the beauty aisle at your local grocery store. The Max Factor cosmetics line wasn’t invented and branded by impersonal, slick-suited admen in a glossy boardroom. He was a pioneer who not only shaped and defined the aesthetics of classic cinema (from glamour girls to tough guys and everything in between) but he brought make-up to the masses in a way that was, and is, distinctly modern. His genius for invention and marketing, as well as his humble beginnings in Central Europe, make his story a neat parallel to those of the movie moguls who were his contemporaries. Continue reading
[Book Nerd News] A Few Bookish Links for You to Click on and Read at Your Leisure
- In Proust’s Library (the Paris Review)
- Beatrix Potter and Her Rabbits (Retronaut)
- Another Bridget Jones Novel is in the Works (Flavorwire)
- Philip Roth Quits Writing (Huff Post Books)
Shopping for the Bookworm: Robert Louis Stevenson Edition
Grab your favourite beverage, sit back, and enjoy looking at these Robert Louis Stevenson themed goods!
Robert Louis Stevenson Quote-Letterpress Art Print by tag team tompkins-$8.00
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson at 4Get-Me-Not Treasures-$18.00 Continue reading
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 