Tag Archives: Writing

Shopping for the Bookworm: The Great Gatsby Edition

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It’s no secret that I am skeptical of the  Baz Luhrmann adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Since it is set for a Christmas Day release, we will be inundated with ads for another 6+ months. Now that we have seen the trailer I am, for the most part, content to turn my back on the growing hullabaloo surrounding the movie. Instead, I’m going to re-focus on the book. What a concept, right? In that vein, this Shopping for the Bookworm is dedicated to all things F. Scott Fitzgerald/Gatsby. Enjoy! Continue reading →

The Great Gatsby Trailer

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Call me conflicted. Go ahead, do it! I am openly ambiguous about F. Scott Fitzgerald as a writer, yet I have never been able to completely escape The Great Gatsby’s allure. Or that of Tender is the Night. Or This Side of Paradise. Or many of his short stories (I’m looking straight at you, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz). There is so much to admire, and so much to question. However, I am going to leave that for another day (as I am working on a new Fitzgerald essay). The Great Gatsby, for all of Hollywood’s money and resources, has never been satisfactorily adapted to film. The Alan Ladd/Betty Field version (directed by Elliot Nugent, 1949) and the Robert Redford/Mia Farrow iteration (directed by Jack Clayton, 1974) are both so-so. Although I write extensively on silent cinema, I have never seen the lost (?)1926 Herbert Brenon directed film starring my hometown movie star (and early Academy Award winner) Warner Baxter, with Lois Wilson as Daisy. Although a good actor, he seems entirely miscast. So much so, that I am really intrigued. Until then, we have this:

Make of it what you will. I’m not sold, but I will probably see it anyway. Unlike HBO’s Hemingway & Gellhorn, which looks so bad that my soul hurts.

A Year in Books/Day 142: American History

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  • Title: American History
  • Year Published: 1911/This Edition: 1933 (The Athenaeum Press)
  • Year Purchased: 1930s
  • Source: My Step-grandmother.
  • About: This book belonged to my Step-grandmother. She started high school the year this edition hit classrooms. It was, as the excerpt below testifies, a very modern take on the subject. What was new then is, nearly 80 years later, a piece of history itself. It is a window into how education was approached during the early part of the 20th century.
  • Motivation: I just love old books (and history!). The books I inherited from my Step-father’s mother (and grandmother) are still in excellent condition; I treasure them deeply.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page iii: “The present volume represents the newer tendency in historical writing. Its aim is not to tell over once more the old story in the old way, but to give the emphasis to those factors in our national development which appeal to us as most vital from the standpoint of today. However various may be the advantages of historical study, one of them, and perhaps the most unmistakable, is to explain prevailing conditions and institutions by showing how they have come about.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8

    New $1.62

    New $1.62

The Dead Writers Round-Up: 23rd-27th May

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  • Henrik Ibsen died on 5/23/1906. “Do not use that foreign word “ideals.” We have that excellent native word “lies.””
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on 5/25/1803. “A great man is always willing to be little.”
  • Madame de La Fayette died on 5/25/1693. “Never refuse any advance of friendship, for if nine out of ten bring you nothing, one alone may repay you.”
  • Maxwell Bodenheim was born on 5/26/1892. “Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind.”
  • Dashiell Hammett was born on 5/27/1894. “I deserve all the love you can spare me. And I want a lot more than I deserve.”
  • Rachel Carson was born on 5/27/1907. “Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life.”

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A Year in Books/Day 140: Evelyn Waugh

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  • Title: Evelyn Waugh The Later Years 1939-1966
  • Author: Martin Stannard
  • Year Published: 1992/This Edition: 1994 (W.W. Norton & Company)
  • Year Purchased: 2000?
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: I’m currently on a Bright Young Things reading binge; although it focuses on Waugh’s mature years, this book almost instantly came to mind. It is one of the better biographies present on my sagging shelves. A potent reminder that he was more than just the writer of Brideshead Revisited (which, if it came down to that, wouldn’t be such a bad thing), Stannard succeeds in making the complex yet usually unapproachable Waugh, for good and bad, seem human. It is a masterly work.
  • Motivation: I collect dead writer biographies like kids collect toys.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 170: “The delay in departure was all Waugh needed to fire his imagination. There was, he felt, a story in this about everything that had troubled him since leaving the army, and Scott-King’s Modern Europe was to be his revenge on his hosts.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9
    Portrait of Evelyn Waugh

    Portrait of Evelyn Waugh (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 139: Schott’s Original Miscellany

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  • Title: Schott’s Original Miscellany
  • Author: Ben Schott
  • Year Published: 2003 (Bloomsbury)
  • Year Purchased: 2004/2005
  • Source: Bas Bleu
  • About: If I decided to write a reference book, it would be in this mould: eccentric, far-reaching and a treat to read. The entries are ridiculously fun yet still informative (as, of course, all such books should be): Eponymous Foods, Hampton Court Maze, Public School Slang, The Language of Flowers, Churchill & Rhetoric, Proverbially You Can’t, Super Bowl Singers, George Washington’s Rules and The Bond Films are just a few. It is a little treasure of a volume, and one that suits those of us for whom so-called useless knowledge is one of life’s great enjoyments.
  • Motivation: We all know that I LOVE reference books. Of any kind. I also hanker after eclectic knowledge because, well, why not?
  • Times Read: Cover-to-cover:1/As reference tool: countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page 5: “An encyclopedia? A dictionary? An almanac? An anthology? A lexicon? A treasury? A commonplace? An amphigouri? A vade-mecum? Well…yes. Schott’s Original Miscellany is all of these and, of course, more.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10++

Voices from the Grave #20: Leonard Woolf Speaking on Bloomsbury and Virginia Woolf

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This is a rare recorded interview of Leonard Woolf speaking about his wife, Virginia, and their friends and fellow artists in that loose, non-movement called the Bloomsbury Group. It is nearly ten minutes long but is well worth your time. It was recorded in May 1964, when Leonard was 83.