Speakers

1,000 Books to Read Before You Die – James Mustich – American Writers Museum – October 4, 2018

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At the end of the 1960 version of the movie The Time Machine, Mrs. Watchett, the housekeeper of H.G. Wells’s alter ego George, discovers three empty spaces on the book shelves. George’s friend Filby asks what three books Watchett would have taken (to aid the Eloi in the year 802,701 A.D.), a question that goes unanswered.

Also unanswered, at least for me, is whether The Time Machine, or any other Wells work, is included in 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die. I didn’t think to ask Musitch and the alphabetical by author excerpt on Amazon doesn’t make it to W. Perhaps I should travel back in time and ask Musitch, or, I could buy the book.

Interestingly, Wells’s book doesn’t pose the question about what books to take. And the 2002 movie remake starring Guy Pearce circumvents it by including a photonic librarian in the future who has the knowledge contained in all the books ever published. That’s more memory than my iPhone.

Pearce also plays a character in the movie Memento, suffering from anterograde amnesia, who has short term memory loss approximately every five minutes, so really no point in reading any books. And, while it seems like that would make learning lines difficult, as Marlon Brando demonstrated, memorization is unnecessary as long as you have a fellow actor like Robert Duvall in the Godfather holding up cue cards against his body for your benefit.

Brando said it helped with his spontaneity.  I wonder if I could have used that excuse in order to bring a cheat sheet to an exam. I recall that Woody Allen said he was thrown out of college for cheating on a metaphysics exam when he looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to him.

Musitch demonstrated a healthy memory, rattling off knowledge and opinion about books and authors I’ve never heard of, but I bet I know more about Seinfeld, Law and Order, and The Big Bang Theory episodes than he does.

 

David L. Carlson, Landis Blair, Charlie Rizzo – The Hunting Accident: A True Story of Crime and Poetry – American Writers Museum – September 6, 2018

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I arrived, and departed, confused by the term graphic novel, relieved only by the fact that, according to Wikipedia, author Daniel Raeburn wrote “I snicker at the neologism first for its insecure pretension—the literary equivalent of calling a garbage man a ‘sanitation engineer’—and second because a ‘graphic novel’ is in fact the very thing it is ashamed to admit: a comic book, rather than a comic pamphlet or comic magazine.”

This program had two distinct aspects to it, the discussion of the process of putting together the graphic novel (written by Carlson and illustrated by Blair), and the substance of the story (about Rizzo’s father). Listening to the discussion of the process was not quite as interesting as watching cheese age, which I had occasion to do in 2007 on cheddarvision.tv.

Carlson was overly fond of referencing John Keats’s concept of truth of imagination, as stated by Keats, in an 1817 letter to Benjamin Bailey (whoever he was), as “What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth – whether it existed before or not.”

According to Carlson, he used this philosophy when taking liberties to fill in the story of Rizzo’s father. I always thought we just called that poetic license. Thinking about poetic license led me to a short item on Druid Life comparing it to fake news.

In any event, poetic license would have been a more appropriate reference in this case since the story is about a man who became a poet after being blinded while committing a robbery, and being taught braille by his cellmate, the infamous Nathan Leopold (whom, although long dead, you can friend on Facebook), at Stateville Prison, which the book compares to Dante’s nine circles of hell. Now doesn’t that grab you more than cheese aging?

Jennifer Keishin Armstrong – American Writers Museum – June 19, 2018

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I saw, maybe, two episodes, of Sex and the City, but I wasn’t oblivious to its popularity. Jennifer Armstrong has written books about The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Seinfeld (she says she writes cultural histories and has been called a tv anthropologist), so I figured she’s probably got a sense of humor, which is why I went to see her discuss her new book, Sex and the City and Us.

For better or worse, I learned a few things (that everyone else in the audience seemed to know already based on the constant head nodding). I generally knew about the impact of the show on the consumption of cosmopolitans and a heightened awareness of shoes (Armstrong suggested that the Carrie Bradshaw character proved that you could be dark and twisty and still like shoes), but now I know about the show’s effect on the world of cupcakes (the museum provided some bite-size cupcakes for us).

Armstrong also delved deeply into the adult education provided by the show, rattling off a series of sex terms that the show introduced to its viewers (sorry, I didn’t write them down).

According to Armstrong, all the sex in the show was based upon true stories that happened either to a writer of the show or someone a writer knew first hand. Carrie Bradshaw wondered about a lot of things (see “Everything Carrie Ever Wondered About on Sex and the City”). I wonder which came first, having a lot of sex stories, which qualified you to be one of the writers, or getting hired as a writer and then having to go out and have weird sexual encounters.

And, I wonder, is it really true that Mr. Big was so named because of his “status as a ‘major tycoon, major dreamboat, and majorly out of [Carrie’s] league,'” rather than, well, you know? And, was he the same Mr. Big who was Boris Badenov’s superior on Rocky and Bullwinkle?

 

Science Friday – Harris Theater – June 16, 2018

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I went to a taping of the NPR show Science Friday at the Harris Theater, which would make a good bomb shelter if things don’t work out with Kim Jong-un.

Unlike some of my friends, I’ve never been an NPR junkie. Over the years my listening has been limited to Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me; Car Talk (gone); and Whad’ya Know (gone), for which I was part of a test audience before they went on the air in 1985. I was selected to compete in the quiz and, when interviewed by Michael Feldman, made some wise crack response to him that he didn’t appreciate because he was supposed to get the laughs. No big deal as I figured the show was a rip-off of You Bet Your Life that had no chance of succeeding. Sure enough, it only lasted 31 years, so there!

The Science Friday taping included a segment on urban coyotes and a description of how, in the 19th century, they used to make Indian yellow paint from the urine of cows that were fed mango leaves. They didn’t discuss the effect on humans of eating mango. The show also included a disappointing Second City skit about the bidding war over a meteorite that fell to earth in Park Forest, Illinois in 2003. I would have rather seen scenes from The Blob.

The best part of the evening was Eugenia Cheng, the Scientist-in-Residence at the School of the Art Institute (cool job), who gave a reasonably understandable explanation of the intersection of music and mathematics as it relates to piano tuning (the twelfth root of two comes into play), played a couple piano selections, and engaged in a discussion with another mathematician about math as an art (even though the show isn’t called Art Friday). I would go see her speak again anytime (watch a video of her on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert).

The American Writers Museum has a Science Friday program coming up in August that I plan to attend, so I guess I’m heading toward becoming a groupie.

Printers Row Lit Fest – June 9, 2018

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Because of the morning rain, I didn’t get the early start I’d hoped for and ran out of time to enter the flash fiction mystery writing contest put on each year at the fest by the Mystery Writers of America, which I also missed out on two years ago when they ran out of time before I could read the story I wrote that day. It was probably just as well since my only experience regarding mystery writing is the mystery as to whether I’ll think of anything to write.

Some friends and I couldn’t get into one restaurant by the fest because it was too crowded and got kicked out of another, which was mostly empty, because they didn’t like our limited order. No mystery as to why they didn’t have more customers.

The only program I saw at the fest was Chris Nashawaty, the film critic at Entertainment Weekly, author of Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story, in conversation with Michael Phillips, film critic for the Chicago Tribune.

It was interesting and fun, with the best moment being when an audience member told Nashawaty that he had been a Chick Evans Caddie Scholarship recipient and that Caddyshack was the anthem for golf caddies everywhere. Nashawaty then asked how many former caddies there were in the audience and at least a dozen people raised their hands. The audience roared its approval of itself.

We learned about a cocaine-laced production, which was almost entirely improvised, and had no coherent structure until they came up with the idea of tying together, more or less – mostly less, the seemingly unrelated comedic scenes by adding more shots of the gopher. Despite the mostly unkind initial reviews of the film, the rest is history. Except for the cocaine, this sounded a lot like my life, so I’m shopping for a gopher who can sing I’m Alright.

The Thrill of the Grass: Celebrating Baseball Writing for the Ages – American Writers Museum – April 17, 2018

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When I was young, I read a lot about baseball. I knew all the stories. So I couldn’t pass up this program featuring baseball authors Dan Epstein, Josh Wilker, and Joe Bonomo.

Among other selections, the program included readings by Epstein from his book, Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of 76 and by Wilker from his book, Cardboard Gods: An All American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards. And Bonomo read Roger Angell excerpts to promote Bonomo’s forthcoming book, No Place I Would Rather Be: Roger Angell, a Writer’s Life in Baseball.

What did these books (and the program itself) have in common besides baseball? Colons. Remember when book titles didn’t have colons followed by a descriptive phrase? It was War and Peace, not War and Peace: A Russian Tale of Five Families in the Time of Napoleon.

This led me to look for and discover an article about the trend toward “colonization” in book titles, thus proving that there’s an article somewhere online about anything you can imagine.

My examination of colons (colonoscopy?) aside, this was yet another of the American Writers Museum fine programs. But remember when you went to bookstores (remember bookstores?) to hear writers, and celebrities pretending to be writers, talk about their books? For example, I remember seeing Gene Hackman discuss his book (for which he had a cowriter) Wake of the Perdido Star: A Novel (good thing his publisher included the colon and that explanation, otherwise I might have thought it was a painting) in 1999 at the Michigan Avenue Borders (RIP).

Despite my nostalgia for brick and mortar bookstores, I have come to prefer reading ebooks. And here I am writing a blog, for which, it now occurs to me, I may need an expanded title that includes a colon, and phrase to follow, if I want to expand my reach.   I’m thinking about Art Gets Out: A Blog That Has Nothing To Do with Hotels or Facebook (by far the two most searched for keywords according to PageTraffic.

 

Lilibet Snellings – American Writers Museum (AWM) – April 19, 2018

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It doesn’t have the ring of great literature, a compelling who-done-it, or timely historical fiction, but how could I not go to a program about a book entitled Box Girl: My Part Time Job As An Art Installation (not to be confused with either Girl in the Box, the serious, made-for-tv movie based on a true story about a kidnapping, or Million Dollar Baby, a movie about a boxing girl).

Snellings read passages from her book about her Los Angeles life as a twenty-something self-described “slash” (writer/waitress/actress/model/Box Girl) trying to eke out a living. While the inclusion in the book of the Standard Hotel, Hollywood’s Box Girl rules didn’t demonstrate Snelling’s writing skills, her observations about the rules regarding things like the wearing of underwear in the box were amusing. There were several times during her time at the podium, while reading or answering questions, when she delightfully made herself, and then the audience with her, laugh.  I also recommend looking at the hotel’s own Inside the Box webpage.  Very odd.

One of the questions to Snellings had to do with the possibility of a movie based on her book. It made me wonder whether a movie about a box girl would be good box office (sorry about that).

The program was a fundraiser put on by the Chicago Council of the AWM for the educational programs of the AWM, which meant that there was good cheese and wine, although sadly no red wine out of fears of spillage according to the bartender (I suggest that the museum check out the Good Housekeeping website for cleaning tips so I can have my red wine next time.

 

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.”