Authors

Nell Scovell – Chicago Ideas – March 28, 2018

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Even with her marital tie to the movie industry (in case you’ve been living in a cave the last five years, her husband is George Lucas), well-known president of Ariel Investments Mellody Hobson, who described herself as a geek in designer clothes, seemed like an odd choice to interview comedy writer Nell Scovell until Hobson informed the audience that the two of them were close friends who spend a lot of time together.

They got to know each other when Sheryl Sandberg asked Hobson to write a chapter on race and owning who you are for Lean In for Graduates. Scovell had cowritten Lean In with Sandberg, who asked her to work with Hobson on her chapter in the second book.

As Hobson tells it, upon submitting her chapter, Scovell called to tell her that she and Sandberg had two things in common, they were both really smart and they both were terrible writers. This made me wonder whether Scovell might have ghostwritten Sandberg’s forward to Scovell’s book Just the Funny Parts: … And a Few Hard Truths About Sneaking into the Hollywood Boys’ Club.

The book, as the title indicates, is about more than the funny parts. Scovell has long been a behind-the-scenes talent, well-known in the industry for her comedy writing for many television shows. She even has worked with Barack Obama, for whom, Hobson emphasized, Scovell wrote for White House Correspondents’ Dinners, not a State of the Union Address.

But Scovell made a public name for herself when she wrote a 2009 Vanity Fair essay, “Letterman and Me,” (https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2009/10/david-letterman-200910) that discussed issues relating to the employment and treatment of women in the late-night talk show arena.

Like the book, the interview covered both the funny and the serious. Her discussion of humor ranged as far as quoting the opening line of the novel Scaramouche – “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” Scaramouche, a buffoon character in the commedia dell’arte, is, of course, not to be confused with Anthony Scaramucci, who was White House Communications Director for 10 days.

Martin Amis – American Writers Museum -March 20, 2018

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Martin Amis, a British novelist and essayist, was introduced as being qualified to speak at the American Writers Museum by virtue of his having lived in Brooklyn the last seven years. The room was full. I don’t think anyone cared where he lived.

He opened by telling us that Brits don’t go to listen to authors, that if your brother had just written a number one bestseller and was next door talking about it, you wouldn’t go. Perhaps that’s why Amis moved to Brooklyn.

He then read from his latest book, The Rub of Time, a collection of past pieces. The headline from The Guardian review of the book said it’s “brilliant, except when it’s not.” That’s the way I felt about Amis. His choice of passages to read was odd, given that a lot of what he read consisted not of his own writing, but of quotes from Donald Trump. That would be like Tina Fey simply reciting a Sarah Palin speech. Oh, wait.

Amis extolled the virtues of Melville’s Billy Budd, which caused a man behind me to suggest that there should have been a spoiler alert before Amis revealed the book’s ending. Given that the book was published in 1924, it made me wonder what the statute of limitations is on spoiler alerts.

A man in front of me asked a question that led Amis to suggest that a certain man in the news didn’t have sex with a certain woman, but rather engaged in some behavior in her presence not seen twice in human history. My imagination was at a loss, but I laughed anyway.

Amis’s favorite authors are Bellow and Nabokov, though Amis suggested that Nabokov wrote four too many novels involving 12-year-old girls (out of the seven such novels he wrote). Seven! It seems like one should have been enough. (I remember walking into a college interview with a copy of Lolita in hand to read while in the waiting room. Nothing like making a good first impression.)

Kate Moore – American Writers Museum – March 18, 2018

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We didn’t know Kate Moore was British (after all, we were at the American Writers Museum and her book was about Americans) until she opened her mouth to reveal a delightful accent and to tell us she was from “across the pond.”

She spoke nonstop for an hour about her book, The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, providing personal details about the women’s lives, while also discussing their place in history as it relates to discoveries about the effects of radium poisoning and changes in occupational disease labor law.

Leonard Grossman Jr., the son of the lawyer who represented some of the women in their battle against their employer, was at the museum for the program. He has an interesting website with scans of original newspaper articles about the women from the 1920s and 30s.

Though I usually prefer going to hear authors who have something humorous to say, all the authors I’ve seen at the museum perform a very important function for me. They give me something to talk about at parties, making me sound well-read, without actually having to read anything.

With this important function in mind, I’m heading back to the museum to see Martin Amis discuss The Rub of Time.  Last time I looked, he was also British. But his publisher describes him as “acidly funny”, so I’m back on safe ground.

After listening to Moore, we went to dinner at Howells and Hood, which wouldn’t be significant except to note that we both ordered chicken dishes and the waiter came back a few minutes later to tell us they were out of chicken! According to the National Chicken Council, the average American ate over 91 pounds of chicken last year . So you’d think a restaurant would be prepared for the likelihood of someone ordering chicken. At least they didn’t try to substitute something else lying around the kitchen that “tastes like chicken.”

 

David Mamet – Chicago Humanities Festival (CHF) – March 1, 2018

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Mamet appeared before a sold-out crowd as part of the book tour for his new novel, Chicago, which, thankfully, was less than half the size of the tome, Leonardo da Vinci, that I had to lug home and attempt to wade through after seeing Walter Isaacson speak at a CHF based-on-a-book program last October.

Mamet was erudite and funny. I preferred the funny part, like when he quoted Mel Brooks. When he was quoting Archimedes, Aristotle, or Shakespeare, or rambling (the kind of rambling where no one remembers the question) on about the relationship between theater and religion, I was less interested. If some University of Chicago professor wants to delve into that at another program, go for it, but I won’t be there.

The interviewer, Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones, spent most of the hour appearing star-struck. He said he had already read Mamet’s book three or four times, and read aloud a passage from it, apparently for the purpose of informing the audience that he didn’t understand several of the words (Chris, if you’re reading this, here is the url for the online Merriam-Webster dictionary – https://www.merriam-webster.com), a sycophantic move that said more about Jones than it did about Mamet.

The highlight of the hour for me was Mamet saying that his favorite writers were Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur. My mother used to tell me that my brother and I were named after Charles McArthur, which, early on, I unfortunately, traumatically, mistakenly heard as Charlie McCarthy, one of Edgar Bergen’s dummies. She also used to tell me that she and my father found me after I fell out of the crab apple tree in the backyard, at which point they exclaimed “Eureka!” (I made up that last part to show that I also could quote Archimedes), so who knows.

American Writers Museum – Gillian Flynn and A.J. Finn – January 16, 2018

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I haven’t read any of Gillian Flynn’s books (though I enjoyed the movie Gone Girl) and I haven’t read A.J. Finn’s first effort, the highly acclaimed The Woman in the Window, but now that I have seen Finn speak in person, I will remedy that omission. He’s a hoot – candid, funny, animated, articulate, and well-schooled. The program was a give-and-take between the authors that was never dull.

Because it started 15 minutes late, as too many things I go to seem to do, I had to leave when they started taking questions from the audience. I regretted having to leave early on this occasion, although often I can’t get out fast enough at that point in a program to avoid the questioners who don’t know the difference between a question and a statement, or just want to hear themselves talk, or want everyone else in the room to hear their opinion or resume. If that’s your thing, start a blog, like I did, where people can read your thoughts, if so inclined, at their leisure and without it cutting into the time of the invited speakers.

There were only a few empty seats when we got there, but apparently the museum is still new enough (it just opened in March 2017) that there aren’t a lot of members yet (I happen to be one). So, after being adorned with member wrist bands, we were lovingly directed to a couch along the wall. We couldn’t see the speakers, but had no complaint about that.  Even so, a staff person came by and suggested that I could push the couch forward along the wall to a spot that would allow an unimpeded view. I hesitated doing so, but the staff person took it upon herself to do it for us. My $40 membership had already paid dividends.