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Weekend Butler: Francis Ford Coppola’s surveillance thriller, “The Conversation.” The marriage of Garcia Marquez & Mercedes Barcha. Artisanal Firewood? Anne Lamott. A classic baseball novel for kids. Louise Glück. Braised asparagus.

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Feb 14, 2024
Category: Weekend

SUPPORTING BUTLER: Since the start of 2023, Amazon seems to have gone on a quiet campaign to rid itself of small sites that, collectively, generate revenue worth noticing — and Head Butler no longer gets a commission on your Amazon purchases. Although this site was never designed to be a moneymaker, it was always key that it pay its production costs.  And now it doesn’t. Did I appeal? Of course. But Amazon is a walled fortress; you can appeal its decisions, but it won’t respond.

So…. the only way you can contribute to Head Butler’s bottom line is to become a patron of this site, and automatically donate any amount you please — starting with $1 — each month. The service that enables this is Patreon, and to go there, just click here.  Again, thank you.

THIS WEEK IN BUTLER:  The All of It: a novel.  Love in the Time of Cholera.  Paul Desmond.

Rodrigo Garcia is an accomplished screenwriter and director, whose credits include “Six Feet Under,” “The Sopranos,” and “In Treatment.” And yet he was ambivalent about writing this book. There was the not small matter of his father’s pronouncement: “Everyone has three lives: the public, the private and the secret.” His son is in dangerous territory with this memoir — he’s invading his parents’ private and possibly secret lives. And then he has his own issues: “Beneath the need to write may lurk the temptation to advance one’s own fame in the age of vulgarity. Perhaps it might be better to resist the call and to stay humble. Humility is, after all, my favorite form of vanity.” But.. he shared plenty.

On the day of her wedding, Mercedes wouldn’t put on her wedding dress until she knew Gabo was at the church. In her home “the line between the public and the private” was strictly enforced, but after Mexico’s president referred to her as “the widow” during a memorial service for García Marquez, she jokingly hreatened to tell the first journalist she encountered of her plans to remarry.

The anecdotes about Marquez are equally intimate. He worked for five hours a day, seemingly in a trance. When his children entered, he looked at them, but had no idea what they said. At lunch, he was completely present, often announcing he was writing the best novel since the Russians. He never attended a funeral.

The heart of the book is Gabo’s slow journey to death. “Memory is my tool and my raw material,” he said. “I cannot work without it,” Marquez would repeatedly plead to his son, “Help me.” But there was no help to give. Marquez became unable to write or recognize familiar faces. He couldn’t follow conversations. For the first time, he reread his own books. He was surprised to see his face on the book jackets. He asked, “Where on earth did all this come from?”

His secretary tells me that one afternoon she found him standing alone in the middle of the garden, looking off into the distance, lost in thought.

“What are you doing out here, Don Gabriel?”

“Crying.”

“Crying? You’re not crying.”

“Yes, I am. But without tears. Don’t you realize that my head is now shit?”

 There’s a big book to write about this marriage. This is the short one — 176 pages, 25 of them photographs. It tells as much as Garcia can. It’s very beautiful, it’s enough. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here. For the audiobook, read by the author, click here.]

WEEKEND MUSIC

Jesse Malin, “Todd Youth.” Because it will eventually be summer. This video celebrates New York’s Lower East Side at a time when money was short and apartments were cheap and a friend who died in India was mourned — joyously.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

WEEKEND READING

Baseball season starts soon!  I know because the classical music radio station tells me that pitchers and catchers are now reporting for Spring Training. And here’s a baseball novel for kids that hasn’t been banned and, if the self-appointed censors have a smidge of sanity, never will be. John Tunis was the master of this genre, and you could do worse than read The Kid from Tomkinsville with the young fan in your home.

WEEKEND POEM

Because just chopping logs just…won’t… do. Watch this. 

PAUL DESMOND’S ROYALTIES

Desmond died young. His royalties for “Take Five” continued. A book has reported that the royalties topped $6 million, and the recipient was the American Red Cross.

WEEKEND MOVIE: FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA, “THE CONVERSATION”

In 1972, the entire world watched “The Godfather.” At the Academy Awards, Francis Ford Coppola was appropriately honored — the film won three Oscars: Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

In 1974, Coppola released what is generally agreed to be the best sequel in film history. “Godfather II” was the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It also won Oscars for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Little known fact: One of the films that lost to “Godfather II” that year was directed by… Francis Ford Coppola. “The Conversation” received three Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Sound. It did win the Palme D’Or at Cannes, but it was a commercial disappointment, and unless you’re a film fanatic, you may never have heard of a film a New York Times critic called “Coppola’s best movie, a landmark film of the seventies and a stunning piece of original American fiction.” [To watch the streaming video on Amazon Prime, click here.]

WEEKEND RECIPE: ASPARAGUS BRAISED WITH FRESH ROSEMARY AND BAY LEAVES