Short Takes
August 11, 2009
David Updike: Eulogy for My Father
Whether you liked John Updike’s writing or not, whether you cracked open his books or not — if you read nothing else this week, read his son’s eulogy. It’s gorgeous.
August 10, 2009
Malcolm Gladwell: Out of Whack
I’ve often thought that Malcolm Gladwell is too slick to be true, but I was agog when The New Yorker published his piece on “To Kill A Mockingbird”. The flaw was massive: He used 21st Century values to sneer at a novel that was published in 1960 and set in the South of the 1930s. Many of you wrote me, all angry with Gladwell. The most moving note, from Gretchen Morgan: “Coming of age in the 60s in Texas where ‘colored’ bathrooms still existed, it was hard to ‘do the right thing’ around race relations. Being white, I was called in to the Dean’s office in high school for walking around the halls with a black guy: Don Baylor, who ended up being a professional ball player and then a coach. If I had been righteously angry, it could have hurt Don’s future. Instead, I broke down in tears in the dean’s office and then cried with Don later. We still interacted, just not quite as openly. Should I have been more open about it? No. Did I feel guilty about it? Yes!”
August 7, 2009
Sincerely, John Hughes
In which every smart kid’s favorite film director becomes the pen pal — and friend — of a teenage fan. Read it and cheer.
August 6, 2009
Julie & Julia: Will You Still Be Hungry Afterward?
Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia opens this weekend, aloft on the hopes of foodies, chick flick lovers and Ms. Ephron’s omnivorous publicity machine. I haven’t seen it, but from the trailer, I might be tempted to conclude that the film’s potential stumbling block is Meryl Streep as Julia Child: She’s neither the brilliant co-author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking or the woman in Child’s memoir, My Life in France — she’s Big Bird or, as an early viewer has noted, Mrs. Doubtfire. But on her very smart blog, Elizabeth Frank suggests the problem is Child’s young acolyte, Julie Powell: “Julie launches a blog because all of her college friends have flashy positions and shiny gadgets and she was the promising one in college; she was going to be a writer; she has ‘thoughts.’ She does, in fact, have a lot going for her, which makes her all the more exasperating. She has, for one thing, a bewilderingly loving husband who endures her constant jibes that she has ‘nothing,’ her sulking when no one reads her blog and her tantrum over a ruined stew to such an extent that his final breaking point provides the only crisis in the B plot.” And you? If you see it, please feel free to weigh in.
August 5, 2009
Michael Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, The New York Times Book Review — and Head Butler?
Joan Schenkar published Patricia Highsmith & Michael Jackson: How the Dark Lady of American Letters Met the Self-Styled King of Pop on these screens recently, and a great many people noticed — including the editors of the New York Times. Now the Highsmith comments about Jackson are the first item in this week’s “Inside the List” column in the Sunday Book Review. We blush. We thank Joan Schenkar again and look forward anew to her upcoming biography, The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith. And, as is our job description, we hold the door open in welcome for our new visitors.