Rush & Molloy reports (via Darwin Porter’s upcoming bio) that Katharine slept with the following people: Claudette Colbert, Greta Garbo, Judy Holliday, Judy Garland, Laura Harding, Irene Selznick, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer, the wife of David O. Selznick, Ernest Hemingway, John Ford, George Stevens, John Barrymore, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, Paul Henreid, and (of course) Spencer Tracy.
Month / February 2004
Edwards Appeals to Former Clark Supporters With Hand Shadow Show
AM Quickies
Maya Angelou is profiled by the Boston Globe. Several paragraphs focus upon Angelou’s effect on a crowd. There are comparisons made between Angelou and Lorraine Hansberry. In fact, the general gist is that if you haven’t read Angelou, you probably should, though without explaining why and without outlining an argument. It’s the kind of tepid summary that spells out what’s wrong with current book coverage. Instead, of inviting entree into the I’ve Read At Least Three Angelou Books And I Liked ‘Em club, the article admonishes why you should read it in a way that resembles an Atkins Diet manifesto, though without the immediate payoff.
The Age notes that spending ten minutes a day writing in a journal improves mental health. However, writing three hours a day and failing to publish a book after ten years will turn you into Laura Miller.
The new Paris Review is up. Michael Frayn offers some interesting advice: ” Let me say for a start that I don’t think it is a very good idea to write different sorts of things. If I were to give serious practical advice to a young writer about how to succeed I would say: Write the same book, or the same play, over and over again, just very slightly different, so that people get used to it. It takes some time, but if you do it often enough, finally people will get the hang of it, and get familiar with it, and they’ll like it. ”
Of course, Frayn notes that he hasn’t done this personally. I’d like to think that this revelation is a circumlocutory way of taking out the competition. But it bears striking similarities to recent quotes by Bill Keller.
Newsday interviews Ana Menendez, a Cuban exile turned novelist. She once believed that Fidel had supernatural powers. But she changed her mind after reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, realizing that just about everybody does. Millenialists are courting Ms. Menendez as a possible spokesperson.
The NYRoB has a Helen Keller pfoile up. It quotes heavily from the correspondence between Henry James and Keller and examines their relationship.
And the Post dwells upon confession, trying to find the line when a memoir or an essay becomes Too Much Information (or TMI, to use Post vernacular). Susan Shapiro notes that her memoir Five Men Who Broke My Heart has resulted in her husband writing a response, The Bitch Beside Me. And Dale Peck has responded to this memoir by writing The Bitch Inside Me.
New Bookslut
The latest issue of Bookslut is up. There are two interviews, a thoughtful Dorothy Hughes profile by Sarah Weinman, and some disgraceful malarkey.
Roddy Doyle Damns Geisel
Ireland’s best-known writer, Roddy Doyle, has shocked the world. Just before realizing that his books weren’t selling as well as they used to, and looking for a desperate ploy, anything really, to get in the press, he decided that hate was in his best interest. “Green Eggs and Ham is a piece of crap,” he said. “Who the hell does that Seuss bloke think he is? He’s no doctor, that’s for sure.”
Roddy Doyle, a writer with a very ridiculous nose and the winner of some scrappy Booker thing that they also gave to Vernon God Little, announced that he would burn all of his Dr. Seuss books in a bonfire. “Who’s with me? I’m finished with him,” Doyle told a stunned audience in New York. “If he weren’t dead, I’d beat the shit out of him. You can dig up his coffin and I’d still beat the shit out of him. His bones aren’t so tough. I don’t care how short his books were. It’s clear to me that he needed an editor.”
Shortly after this statement, Doyle pulled out a small postcard. On one side was a photograph of his ass, his trousers draped around his legs. The words “Seuss Schmoose” were printed just underneath this terrifying image. On the other was Green Eggs and Ham, condensed to a mere twenty words.
“See? Too bloody long. I did my best to abridge it. And why did he nick Irish green?”
The timing of Doyle’s outburst could hardly have been worse, what with the recent release of The Cat in the Hat, the worst movie of 2003.
The Irish government — still guilty for the way that Doyle fulminates in public — are trying to prevent Doyle from ever addressing an audience again. Unfortunately, they allowed Doyle to slip past customs. Doyle, shortly before getting on board the airplane, offered a series of raspberries to perplexed security officers.