Long Away and Far Ago When People Counted
Ah, vacation! We are recently returned from enjoying the luxury of leaving the turmoil behind for a couple weeks. Trading keyboard upper-body crimes for steering-wheel strains. We saw some remarkable scenery, largely thanks to our usual routine of minimizing use of wide expanses of pavement. I will include a couple teaser-photos here. With luck I will have more on our excellent adventure before long.
A recent routine has been savoring recorded books. I believe we worked our way through three on this trip, all fiction.
One big audio number was Carson McCullers' "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." I did not go looking for this, but when I came upon it I did feel a distinct urge, the title long familiar w/o any ken for the story line, and yet touching a heart-string in some way. Her first book. 1940.
As you know, if you experience books through your ears vs. your eyes, it is a quite different ride. A narrator with a quirk or accent that is off-putting can spoil the experience (I never quirk or accent when I read). But it's been rare for me to encounter that sort of thing. More often it is an enjoyable melding with the environment we are driving through, the viewing of scenery nuanced positively by the listening and vice versa, not necessarily in a way I could possibly describe or even remember down the road (so to speak). But it can be a great conjunction. And it was again so here.
This book proved quite remarkable (we're far from the first to notice that, of course), and with an uncanny resonance with our times. A primary difference between then and now is that in 1940 you could still actually profess democratic principles and an enthusiasm for the constitution, as well as loathing for the anti-constitutional and unpatriotic corruption and exploitation of the rich and the corporations without fear of big-time retribution from the fat-cats, media, and red-baiters. Hell, you could actually espouse communism without fearing a stay in jail. Now that's what I call Free Speech! A pretty engaging book, hopefully encountered previously by some of you. One could quibble about the length and side-tracks, but then I recall a number of prize-winning books more or less from this era with similar "issues." Not an afternoon's undertaking, but highly recommended. Amazingly timely, in fact.
As it happened, I picked up Jules Feiffer's memoir Backing Into Forwards while we were chewing on McCuller. There were a multitude of overlaps between these two books, the first a work of fiction set in the deep South, the other an account of growing up an outsider in what would someday be the Big Apple. Two locales with a natural abhorennce.
Feiffer grew up in the poverty-ridden outskirts of NYC to become one of the iconic cartoonists of our time, courtesy of his own painful yeomanry, eventually a long-standing unpaid run with the Village Voice, and finally wider, paid syndication, not to mention brilliant successes in other media (e.g., screenplay for movie Carnal Knowledge, plays like Little Murders, illustrations for Phantom Tollbooth). And some major pratfalls.
This is not by any means a classic saccharine people-mag, pool-side read. Feiffer refused to play by the rules of the authorities and others throughout his life, stumbled and sinned (if you will) numerous times, by his own admission, and through his memoir comes to seem remarkably salt-of-the-(progressive)-earth. He has a bit of the take-no-prisoners about him, but in a good way, e.g. railing against those who actually cooperated with that loathsome congress-swine from Wisconsin. His encounters with (other) famous people alone are enough to warrant tracking this down. Also highly recommended.
I regret how rarely I had occasion to savor Feiffer's cartoons in the original back when the VV was readily accessible.
A recent routine has been savoring recorded books. I believe we worked our way through three on this trip, all fiction.
One big audio number was Carson McCullers' "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." I did not go looking for this, but when I came upon it I did feel a distinct urge, the title long familiar w/o any ken for the story line, and yet touching a heart-string in some way. Her first book. 1940.
As you know, if you experience books through your ears vs. your eyes, it is a quite different ride. A narrator with a quirk or accent that is off-putting can spoil the experience (I never quirk or accent when I read). But it's been rare for me to encounter that sort of thing. More often it is an enjoyable melding with the environment we are driving through, the viewing of scenery nuanced positively by the listening and vice versa, not necessarily in a way I could possibly describe or even remember down the road (so to speak). But it can be a great conjunction. And it was again so here.
This book proved quite remarkable (we're far from the first to notice that, of course), and with an uncanny resonance with our times. A primary difference between then and now is that in 1940 you could still actually profess democratic principles and an enthusiasm for the constitution, as well as loathing for the anti-constitutional and unpatriotic corruption and exploitation of the rich and the corporations without fear of big-time retribution from the fat-cats, media, and red-baiters. Hell, you could actually espouse communism without fearing a stay in jail. Now that's what I call Free Speech! A pretty engaging book, hopefully encountered previously by some of you. One could quibble about the length and side-tracks, but then I recall a number of prize-winning books more or less from this era with similar "issues." Not an afternoon's undertaking, but highly recommended. Amazingly timely, in fact.
As it happened, I picked up Jules Feiffer's memoir Backing Into Forwards while we were chewing on McCuller. There were a multitude of overlaps between these two books, the first a work of fiction set in the deep South, the other an account of growing up an outsider in what would someday be the Big Apple. Two locales with a natural abhorennce.Feiffer grew up in the poverty-ridden outskirts of NYC to become one of the iconic cartoonists of our time, courtesy of his own painful yeomanry, eventually a long-standing unpaid run with the Village Voice, and finally wider, paid syndication, not to mention brilliant successes in other media (e.g., screenplay for movie Carnal Knowledge, plays like Little Murders, illustrations for Phantom Tollbooth). And some major pratfalls.
This is not by any means a classic saccharine people-mag, pool-side read. Feiffer refused to play by the rules of the authorities and others throughout his life, stumbled and sinned (if you will) numerous times, by his own admission, and through his memoir comes to seem remarkably salt-of-the-(progressive)-earth. He has a bit of the take-no-prisoners about him, but in a good way, e.g. railing against those who actually cooperated with that loathsome congress-swine from Wisconsin. His encounters with (other) famous people alone are enough to warrant tracking this down. Also highly recommended.
I regret how rarely I had occasion to savor Feiffer's cartoons in the original back when the VV was readily accessible.
posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:45 PM
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