Beach Town
It is a happy moment to find an unread Mary Kay Andrews book at the library. The pages of the story turn themselves. Beach Town is more of the same. A book like this is your friend.
The plot is a touch better than recent MKA stories. Greer is a location scout for a movie. She stumbles onto a forgotten town in Florida. Cypress Key seems to be all the Old Florida you can handle. The real life inspiration is Cedar Key, FL.
There are multiple sub plots. Families come together, and blow up again. Small town politics get ugly. A movie set comes to town, with some of the chaos that naturally occurs. Greer only gets fired from the movie once. She was ready to go.
There is lots of “adult activity,” some of which involves a minor. A one star amazon traveler, APNM is dismayed. “So disappointed by this book. I was completely shocked by the gratuitous graphic sex scene between the main characters early in the book, not at all typical in her earlier works. Not sure why the author feels like she must include this kind of stuff now.” One of the players lives on top of his grocery store. When things started to heat up, he went downstairs, and returned with a 40 pack of condoms. He was an optimist.
Him and her kiss for the first time on page 118. They spend most of the book mad at each other. Somehow, they manage to get back together, and then fuss a bit more. Since chamblee54 does not do plot spoilers, you will have to read the book to see how it turns out.
The plot gets a touch unbelievable about three quarters of the way through. In one sequence, Greer sees Allie, the teen aged nephew of the grocery store dude. Allie is horribly upset, at Greer, and the rest of the world. Despite all that, Allie gets in the car. Greer’s long lost father has wrecked his car in a swamp. Allie helps Greer find her dad, with assistance from law enforcement, and cell phone GPS.
Despite, or maybe because of, the insane plot twists, Beach Town is tons of fun. There is no redeeming social value whatsoever. This is reading to enjoy yourself… forget your troubles by worrying about fiction. Pictures for today’s digital entertainment are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
She Always Carries Jonquils
PG found Archival Atlanta: Electric Street Dummies, the Great Stonehenge Explosion, Nerve Tonics, and Bovine Laws : Forgotten Facts and Well-Kept Secrets from Our City’s Past at the Chamblee library. There are always more stories to be heard. This repost has pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. It is written like Margaret Mitchell.
In the 1840s, the Western and Atlantic railroad wanted to hook up with the Central of Georgia railroad. The spot for the meeting was called Terminus. One idea was to name the town for William Lumpkin, a former Georgia Governor and a railroad executive. Lumpkinville sounded bad in the mouth, and the new town was named “Marthasville”, after the daughter of the Governor. (Martha is buried in Oakland Cemetery.) Few people liked this name, and someone decided that the feminine form of Atlantic was Atlanta. Unlike the state flag, this is unlikely to change.
The new town prospered, and recovered from the unpleasantness of 1864. In 1875, there was a problem with stray cows. The answer was the “1875 Cow Ordinance”. The law required that cows be kept in a pen at night. A fine of two dollars was assessed for every stray cow that was caught.
About this time, there were a few very busy railroad tracks going through downtown. People were getting tired of waiting for the trains to go through. One by one, viaducts were built over the tracks, creating a forgotten ground floor. This was built up into Underground Atlanta in the sixties, which was red hot for a while, then cooled off, and is now so so.
In 1897, J.W. Alexander was the first person in town to own a “horseless carriage”. One day, he decided to take a ride to East Point. A mule objected, and kicked man and machine into a ditch.
It is a rule that all history books about Atlanta have to discuss Coca Cola and Gone With The Wind. There are only so many stories to go around. This book tells of an Alpharetta farmer who bought the Tara set from MGM. He stored in a barn, the location of which was a secret. Betty Talmadge wanted to buy it, and the price went from $375k to $5k. After a while, the sale was finalized. There was only one problem…the farmer died, and never told anyone where the barn was. Mrs. Talmadge got the money from her husband’s overcoat, went to Alpharetta, and found the barn. The set was moved into another secret location, where it was in 1996, when Archival Atlanta was published, at an undisclosed local location.
Sam and William Venable owned Stone Mountain, and had a quarry there. (The Ku Klux Klan held meetings on the mountain.) (The spell check suggestion for Ku Klux is Kook Klutz.) Sam built a large granite house at 1410 Ponce de Leon Avenue, and stocked it with ammunition. He thought a race war was on the way, and wanted to be prepared. One night, a chimney overheated. The roof caught on fire. The explosives in the attic exploded, and took the roof off. The house was repaired, Mr. Venable died, and the house became part of a Lutheran church.
One of the few ante bellum houses in Atlanta is near Grant Park. It was once owned by Lemuel Grant, who donated the land for the park. He stays in a large marble house in Oakland Cemetery now. The Grant Park house was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. John Marsh, in partnership with Boyd Eugene Taylor. After the death of Mrs. Marsh (also known as Margaret Mitchell), she was known to visit the house. “Margaret just wanders through the house, looking things over. She never talks, and she always carries jonquils. The first night she came I was very shocked. I went out to her grave at Oakland Cemetery the next day. I’d never been to the house before. But I was almost certain of what I’d find. The plot is covered by a bed of jonquils.”
The Origin Of Barbie
PG found a copy of Snuff at a yard sale. The story was written by Chuck Palahniuk, pronounced paula nick. This book report may have spoilers.
The 197 pages recount an attempt to break a world record. Aging porn star Cassie Wright is trying to take on 600 men in one session. The plan is to die, in a blaze of gooey glory. The story is told by four characters: Mr. 72, Mr. 137, Mr. 600, and Sheila. Each of the four feels a connection to Miss Wright. It is a case of four wrongs making one Wright.
The story gets weirder and weirder. Mr. 72 is convinced that he is the son of Cassie Wright. Mr. 137 became an Okla-homo after being diddled by daddy. Mr. 600 is said to be Miss Wright’s baby daddy. Sheila, original name Zelda Zonk, was another possible Wright baby. After a while, the reader just plows ahead. When PG pays a dollar for a book, he wants his money shot money’s worth.
Snuff has a couple of gimmicks that are repeated to the point of no return. The talent is known by a variety of names, like pud puller, wiener wrangler, page paster, fist flogger, white washer, and sherbet shooter. The movies made by Cassie Wright all had satirical titles, like World Whore One, and The Asshole Jungle. It was funny the first twenty times.
Another gimmick Mr. Nick works us with is the “true fact.” Someone will throw out a chestnut, and say “true fact.” Many of them are Hollywood beauty secrets, like Lauren Becall, and Tallulah Bankhead, drinking eggshell tea. Here is an example.
“… Hitler … was disgusted by seeing his fellow soldiers visit French brothels. To keep the Aryan bloodlines pure,and prevent the spread of venereal disease, he commissioned an inflatable doll that Nazi troops could take into battle. Hitler himself designed the dolls to have blond hair and large breasts. The Allied firebombing of Dresden destroyed the factory … “
Mr. Google has more. “But in 1942 the project was halted when German soldiers refused to carry the dolls because of the potential embarrassment if they were captured by the enemy. Author Graeme Donald uncovered Hitler’s secretive “Borghild Project” while researching the history of Barbie, which was based on a postwar German sex doll.”
“I was actually researching the history of the Barbie doll that was based on a German sex doll of the 1950s. Ruth and Elliot Handler from America visited Germany in 1956 and saw the Lilli dolls that were sold in barbers’ shops and nightclubs – and were not for children Ruth didn’t realise this and bought one and realised later they were not toys. But Ruth and her husband used the doll as a foundation for what became Barbie.”
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Another Roadside Attraction Part Two
This is the second, and final, part of a chamblee54 book report on Another Roadside Attraction, by Thomas Eugene Robbins. The book is due back at the chamblee library today. There are two possible reasons to hurry up, and finish reading the book. A overdue fine from the local library is less of a burden than a failing grade. The effect can be the same… not stopping to smell the verbal roses, but shovelling the animal product that facilitates growth. FWIW, part one is available for your perusal. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The first note is page 177. John Paul Ziller, and his wife Amanda, decline to get drunk. They consider alcohol to be an imperfect drug. This is a line that PG remembers from the 1978 reading of ARA. What was forgotten was Marx Marvelous, the narrator of the tale. He proceeds to get sloshed, and quotes Bertrand Russell: there is little difference between a man who eats too little and sees heaven, and a man who drinks too much and sees snakes.
Amanda replies that one of the men sees snakes. She says a lot of things in ARA. It is probably quite charming in person, especially when one is warm for her form. In the text, forty five years later, it can be rather annoying. On page 336, Marx Marvelous learns two things about Amanda: she loves him deeply, and it totally indifferent as to whether, or not, she sees him again. The concept of sexist condescention, germinating when ARA was written, has come to politically correct fruition in the age of Obama. If one is of the mind to do so, they could judge ARA harshly for this.
There is an order of renegade monks down the road from the Zillers. An associate, Plucky Purcell (more formally known as L. Westminister Purcell III) is a visitor at this facility. This residency is a marvel of totally unbelievable fiction, and is essential to the plot of ARA. The monks are a Vatican hit squad, and Purcell fits right in. In a stroke of impossible to forsee synchronicity, two *good* nuns stop by for a visit. They are Sister Elizabeth and Sister Hillary. They make two appearances… on page 183 and page 283. Amanda decides it is nun of her business.
The Zillers have a roadside zoo, and hot dog stand. It does not sell coffee, which is disappointing to many road warriors. “they stop for coffee, and feel cheated when they learn the meaning of meaning.” PG first heard the phrase “meaning of meaning” in an eleventh grade history class. It was presided over by a basketball coach, who was not interested in the dribbles and shoots of wars and civilizations. For the first test, “Dudley Doo Right” asked the class to write three pages on the meaning of meaning.
As second time readers know, the essential character in ARA is the body of Jesus. It was in the Vatican, until Plucky Purcell found it, and brought it to the Ziller’s hot dog stand. In this edition of ARA, the mummified savior appears on page 222. This is one third of the anti christ. There is something cosmic about a dead Jesus having a numeric value equal to one third of beelzebub. Or maybe it is merely comic, and the author had an extra s that he had to use before the expiration date.
One of the joys of google era reading is easy access to fact checking. (The proposed french word for google was a palindrome, googelegoog.) On page 280, TER reports that Carmen Miranda wore size one shoes. The page wikiFeet for Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha has pictures, which appear to be larger than size one. The Celebrity Shoe Size List has Carmen Electra (size 7) and Carmen Kass (size 8.5,) but no Carmen Miranda. PG thinks the diva detail to be an apparition of overactive imagination.
As ARA rambles on to the uplifting conclusion, a council of war is convened in the hot dog stand. The Zillers, Plucky Purcell, Marx Marvelous, and Mon Cul (John Paul Ziller’s pet baboon) try to decide what to do with the holy remains, known by now as “the corpse.” On page 290, there is a typo, unless “insited” is a scrabble approved word. On page 288, someone is called “utopianist.” This may reefer refer to utopia. A more whimsical vision sees a keyboard musician working for the United Thank Offering. Those Episcopals think of everything.
There are several sides in this debate. Amanda takes the historic approach, and washes her pretty hands of the corpse. Pontius Pilate hands her a bar of soap. Plucky Purcell wants to publicly display the corpse, with the idea of destrying the Catholic church. Marx Marvelous says that lots of Catholics are good people, and telling them that Jesus is dead would hurt their fee fees. Sister Elizabeth, and Sister Hillary, are used as examples.
In truth, the fictional debate has been rendered moot in the post Nixon, but not post racial, world. The Catholic church soldiers on. The revelation that *some* priests like to forcibly sodomize pre adolescent boys has barely mattered to the masses. The church has taken a (catho) licking, and kept on ticking. Co-dependent Protestantism does even better.
Page 290 was where PG had to throw down the book in disgust. Plucky Purcell, backing down from his plan to destroy the church, admits that *Jesus* was a pretty good guy after all. Never mind that the story he quotes is from the Bible… written by hundreds of anonymous authors, hand copied by anonymous scribes, compiled and edited by the Romanized church, translated by a queer English king. How can you trust a book like that? And yet, the PR of Jesus persists. Even the most vicious critics of the modern Jesus worship church have a soft spot for the old boy.
One *page 69,* John Paul Ziller warns against anthromorphizing, or assigning human emotions to non-human animals. And yet, 222 pages later, the text anthromorphizes the cult of Jesus. It must work, because the conclusion of ARA leaves the Roman Pedophile Church intact.
Another Roadside Attraction Part One
The idea was to read the book, sit down at the machine, and have the text flow effortlessly out. That was five weeks ago, when the library copy of Another Roadside Attraction arrived. Now the book is due back in six days. The bookmark … a library handout about taking the GED … is in front of page 163. Marx Marvelous is having his job interview with Amanda Ziller. The body of Jesus has not appeared, although second time readers know it will.
One place to start is with an internet comment. “… For you see, I have discovered something terrible: Tom Robbins has almost no re-read value. Seriously. It is almost nonexistent. … The man really does have a gift. But that gift is a one term president. It just doesnt have what it takes to be re-elected.”
The fine print page in ARA says “Copyright © by Thomas E. Robbins.” It was written during the Richard Nixon administration. Tricky Dick won a thumping re-election in 1972, but resigned under pressure in 1974. PG first read ARA in 1978, or maybe 1977, when Jimmy Carter was POTUS. Smiling Jimmy did not play the game well, and was sent back to the peanut farm by Ronald Reagan. This led to Daddy Bush, Slick Willie, Idiot son Bush, and the current occupant.
TER novels hold up well to second helpings. PG has redone Cowgirls and Woodpecker, the books that made TER a star. (Bad rhyme alert) There is the fun of seeing bits of verbal derring do that you remember from the first go round. If you are looking for plot subtleties to show up, good luck.
ARA has a different feel from the novels that followed. It was the first TER book that PG read, not knowing what would happen in the next 38 years. There is an optimism to ARA… Marx Marvelous is currently predicting the rise of a new religion, to replace obsolete Christianism. Oh, if only. Christianism is, at the core, a marketing scheme. It has adapted to the changing realities of the past four decayed decades. Jesus worship is a day glo mall of ideologies, with something for everyone. The salvation centerpiece at the heart of the bonanza reamains eternal and unchanging. If the product sells, then trust the marketplace.
Another fun idea is to fact check. TER likes to throw “facts” out at rapid speed. One such incident is on page 82. Amanda is discussing some of her ideas for the roadside zoo. (Baby Thor is nowhere to be seen, and is possibly being raised by Mon Cul the baboon.) JPZ is barely listening, being occupied by rubbing his pecker against her belly. Amanda will not quit talking insect trivia. JPZ counters her by saying that bald eagles have bad breath. Before long, JPZ is one twelth of a fathom into Amanda.
With the internet, and too much free time, we can fact check this claim. The first result for “Do bald eagles have bad breath” is a facebook event, “Ranger Talk – Do Bald Eagles Really Have Bad Breath? · Hosted by The San Gorgonio Wilderness Association.” The next result is a 1997 style web page full of Bald Eagle Characteristics. While the halitosis issue is not settled for sure, it sure does sound likely. Since few of us are going to be within range of a bald eagle mouth, this will have to do.
“Q. Do bald eagles have the same digestive system as humans? A. Now there’s an interesting question! The answer is, no. … part of their stomach has turned into a gizzard, which we don’t have, in which food is ground down to a fine consistency to permit rapid digestion. In eagles, this is also the place where pellets are formed. These are masses of material from prey that cannot be digested, such as fur, feathers, and occasionally bone, that then travel backwards from the gizzard up to the mouth and are cast (like vomited) out the mouth. … Another major difference is that eagles (and other birds) have something called a crop, in the upper alimentary track (esophagus) where food can be stored for days.This is extremely beneficial to eagles…”
The first chapter of ARA has relatively little action. The verbal wizardry that TER is known for is not on display. The first chapter is where we meet Amanda, and see her wedding to JPZ. Plucky Purcell, who is possibly the real life stand in for TER, makes an appearance. Amanda says a lot of things, which are either charming or irritating, depending on the reader.
One way to crunch the verbiage is taking notes. Whenever the reader sees something noteworthy, he writes down the page. (The reader here is PG. Masculine pronouns will be used. There is enough confusion already without gender neutral designations for third person humanity.) The book serving this project is “Bantam trade paperback reissue / May 2003 … ISBN 0-553-34948-1.”
Plucky Purcell made his living selling dope and facilitating abortions. In 1971, this was a dodgy enterprise. Baby killing was not yet legal, and the political squalling not yet begun. (College freshman PG attended a lecture about abortion.) On page 66, it is said “His fees are more than fair: he seeks to make a living, not a killing.” Get your irony fix on page 66.
Page 67 has a spelling mistake…Babylonain is not a real word. Both page 70, and page 98 feature the n-word, in all its six letter glory. On page 79, Amanda is said to smell like the leftovers at an eskimo picnic. TER evolves, and some say matures, as his novels progress. It is fun to go back to the start.
Page 114 is a quote that PG remembers from 1977. It struck PG as being very profound, a thought that would confound the cynical fuddy duddy of 2016. Here, through the miracle of internet quote copy paste is the passage. Profound, or confound? Let the reader decide. “The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future, the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit.”
Page 141 … the square root of two with, a similar digital inventory to page 114 … is where the synchronicity sweepstakes announces a winner. Marx Marvelous overhears Amanda Ziller ask if Roland Kirk is indeed the Count Basie orchestra in drag? Little did the fictional Lady Ziller know that PG would see a concert by Rahsaan Roland Kirk on August 9, 1974. This was the night Richard Nixon announced his resignation. Mr. Kirk, aka the modern miracle of the tenor saxophone, passed away December 5, 1977, which is roughly when PG was reading ARA for the first time. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Part two of this book report is now available.
Atlanta Rising
Atlanta Rising: The Invention of an International City 1946-1996 is on the shelf at the Chamblee library. This book is a history of Atlanta in the modern era, written by former fishwrapper scribe Frederick Allen. This is a repost, with pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The story begins in 1948. AR is weighted more to the older part of the story. The main text is 248 pages. On page 124, Ivan Allen has just built a controversial roadblock on Peyton Road, which would be in 1962. The further along in the story, the fewer details are included. The first big story is when Georgia had two governors. This is one of the best descriptions of the two Governors controversy around, and does not mention Ben Fortson’s wheelchair cushion.
The mayor at the start of the story is William B. Hartsfield. “Willie B” was a leader in creating the Atlanta Airport, and in building it into the powerhouse it is today. He was mayor until 1961, when Ivan Allen Jr. moved into the office.
AR has many moments of unintentional irony. When you read a book 18 years after it was written, and fifty years after the events in the book, you see things that could not have been imagined before. In 1960, many of the political-business elite thought it was time for Mr. Hartsfield to retire. Among his shortcomings was an indifference to sports. Mr. Hartsfield thought that a new stadium would be too great a drain on the city’s taxpayers. Fifty four years, and three stadiums, later, the power elite is going to build another stadium. Atlanta Stadium cost eighteen million dollars. The Blank bowl will cost over a billion. (In the past year, a plan to move the Braves to Smyrna was announced.)
One of the big stories here is civil rights. Atlanta came out of that struggle looking pretty good. It was a combination of image conscious businessmen, enlightened black leadership, and a huge helping of dumb luck. In 1961, the city was under federal pressure to integrate the schools. The state was firm in opposition, and the city wasn’t crazy about the idea anyway. Then, another federal court ordered the integration of the University of Georgia. Since the people would not stand for messing with their beloved University, the state laws forbidding integration were quietly repealed. The city schools were integrated with a minimum of fuss. (The book tells this story much better than a slack blogger.)
The controversy about the 1956 model state flag was going full steam when AR was written. The book has some legislative records, which for some reason never made it into the fishwrapper. There is no clear cut answer as to why the legislature changed the state flag. It was mentioned that at the national political conventions, you could not have a written sign, but you could wave a state flag. This controversy provided a diversion from gold dome crookedness, and hopefully has been laid to rest.
A man named Lester Maddox sold fried chicken, and ran for public office. AR describes Lester as looking a bit like an angry chicken. Through a series of constitutional convulsions, Lester was elected Governor in 1966. The state survived his tenure. In the seventies, when Jimmy Carter was running for President, Lester said a lot of rude things about Jimmy, helping the smiling peanut farmer get elected. In another turn of fate, Lester Maddox died June 25, 2003. This was two days after the eternal departure of Maynard Jackson, the first black Mayor of Atlanta.
The book ends with the 1996 Olympics looming over the city. Billy Payne led a smart campaign to secure the games for Atlanta. One of his moves was to keep Jimmy Carter and Ted Turner out of the action. After the 1980 boycott, and the Goodwill Games, neither person was popular with the I.O.C. The book was published before 1996. The Olympics were a blast.
Deep Dish
Amazon Customer I was very disappointed in this book. This was the first book I have read by Mary Kay Andrews so I don’t know about her other books, but I found the language very offensive. I didn’t read past the third chapter and sent the book back for a refund. I think the story could be told without all the crude language and the bad usage of the name of God.
Monysmomon I am sorry I even picked this up at a bargain basement price – the story was dull, the narration was flat and uninteresting and after a few chapters I couldn’t even stand it anymore. Now I can’t even sell it on Ebay
These one star reviewers are talking about Deep Dish, by Mary Kay Andrews. PG did not notice any bad language. The story is totally PG13, with the two main characters not “hooking up” until spoiler alert time. The two battling food show cooks, Regina Foxton and Tate Moody, are on an obvious path for each other.The suspense on how they will get together is one of the best things this book has going for it.
Some New York producer has the idea of competing cooking shows. The two hash slingers will have it out on Eutaw Island, a fictionalized cross between Cumberland Island and Daufuski Island. As you might expect on the Southern coast, there are bugs, storms, and sharp tongued black women. The food fight show has issues.
As if the homegrown population was not enough, Gina brought over D’John, her makeup artist. Apparently, the only job Miss D’John has is watching over Gina, and making catty comments about boyfriends. D’John is not fully fleshed out. This could have been a contribution to the story, but instead is a cartoon character in the background.
Deep Dish is fun to read, but you will feel foolish when you are through. The plot twists are too contrived to go along with. The characters are walking cliches, except for Lisa, the party animal younger sister of Gina. Lisa is a crawling cliche’, until she mysteriously becomes a responsible adult. The only player with any bite is Tate Moody’s dog, Moonpie.
In 2008, PG saw Mary Kay Andrews at the Dickhater Book Festival. At the time, she said she was working on a book about two celebrity cooks, who were married to each other. They would sneak behind each other, and add spices to creations in progress. Deep Dish is copyrighted 2008, so it may be that book. The copyright is assigned to Whodunnit, Inc. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Skink–No Surrender
PG had Skink–No Surrender, by Carl Hiassen, sent to the Chamblee Library. It is another Hiassen book for young adults, like the previously consumed Scat. Skink–No Surrender was entertaining, if a bit unbelievable. Actually, more than a bit far fetched, but still fun to read.
At one point, the teenage hero, Richard, and his buddy Skink, go across the state in a borrowed vehicle. Skink injures his foot, and cannot drive. The fourteen year old Richard takes the wheel. This goes well until blue lights appear. It is Skink’s state trooper buddy, with a learner’s permit for Richard. The state trooper buddy is African American, which makes it ok.
Skink is a favorite character of Mr. Hiassen. A disillusioned former Florida Governor, Skink has one eye, lives in the wild, and eats roadkill. Richard is on the beach with his cousin, Malley, when they find Skink in a fake turtle egg nest. The character is trying to catch people who steal turtle eggs.
Malley runs away from home, not for the first time. She is with a seedy character that she met online. Richard and Skink take off to find her. The action moves quickly, if implausibly, until the conclusion.
The amazon one star customers have their say. Amazon Customer October 8, 2014 He must need money to write this boring garbage, i have enjoyed all of his books until this unfortunate catastrophe Kindle Customer January 4, 2015 Title nails it. I need 17 more words, the book doesn’t’ deserve them. Now 7 more words needed Don’t buy it
One afternoon, in Georgia’s worst parking lot, PG was on page 85, when something caught his eye. “Skink had scavenged a dead racoon on Highway 98. It had been struck by a vehicle with extremely large tires, and the furry ringed tail was the only way to know what kind of mammal it was.” PG had thought that mammals were big dumb animals, like cows and humans. It turns out that a racoon is a mammal. We also learn that sporange is a word that rhymes with orange.
Much of the action takes place in the Florida panhandle. This reminds PG of a story he heard a few hundred times, and can be told again. The family was going to Panama City, and stopped for gas near Ebro. The gas station man saw mom, and said “She putts me to mind of one of the Gilbert girls from De Funiak Springs.” Pictures for this post are from The Library of Congress. These pictures, with one exception, are soldiers from the War Between the States.
Fear Of Dying
PG took his brother GP grocery shopping. While waiting in Georgia’s worst parking lot, PG read Fear of Dying, Erica Jong’s rhyming followup to Fear of Flying. On page 170, PG realized that he might not want to finish the book: “So, this is a story about heaven and hell. The hell of writing is self censorship. The heaven is the speaking of the truth. Women have a particular problem with this.”
Erica Mann Jong (born Erica Mann, with no middle name) does not have a problem with sounding pretentious. EMJ is a feminist, and a Jew, details that are obvious to anyone who reads her. Her saving grace is writing fun books. Her amorous adventure stories are finely crafted works. Even with the parking lot discovery, PG is only 27 pages shy of the end. This is due day at the library, so that may be that. (Roxane Gay might have a different opinion.)
FOD is about wealthy Jewish women that get old. Her parents and poodle die. Her old and wealthy husband has an anuerism. . Wealthy older husband does not need to know about his wife’s adventures on zipless.com. The readers are not spared.
EMJ is good at the book tour game. While promoting FOD, she appeared on The Diane Rehm Show. This is public broadcasting, complete with upbeat intro music, and a hostess from the Lois Reitzes school of non commercial announcing. EMJ began the show by saying “It’s wonderful to see you, Diane. And you — age cannot wither nor custom stale your infinite variety. You look fantastic.” Skype is good for white lies. Later, EMJ tries to explain that she is not exactly Isadora Wing.
JONG Connection, we don’t need fast sex anymore. We need slow sex in a fast world.
REHM In a relationship is what…
JONG We won’t be satisfied by a ZF.
REHM Exactly.
JONG Nothing — we never were, actually. People made much of it, but I, as, you know, the author, never, never liked that kind of sex, never. But I intuited that it was in the zeitgeist. And I remember thinking when people would write in magazine, if the Erica Jongs of this world had their way, women everywhere would hop from bed to bed to bed to bed. And I thought, but I’ve always been monogamous…. Sometimes when a relationship is breaking down, I get itchy, as does the man I’m involved with, but as long as the relationship is totally satisfying, I have always been monogamous. So people do confuse the fantasy in a book with the reality of the author’s life.
A few minutes later, the ladies have a disagreement.
REHM And now it does seem to me that what’s happened with this book is that you’ve gone through all of that. You’ve experienced all of that. You’ve put that behind you, and somehow now you are facing into the reality of your own, as well as Vanessa’s, mortality. And what I want to know is what are you afraid of?
JONG Well, you know, Woody Allen said, who blurbed this book, I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
REHM Yeah. I saw that, and I recognize that you’ve gotten lots of wonderful blurbs. Here’s one from Judy Collins, who was just on this program the other day. She says, fear of dying by Erica Jong is hysterical and touching, compelling and heartbreaking and makes me want even more to live joyfully forever. So I wonder because, you know, Erica, I’m not afraid of dying, and I would like to understand what it is that you think is making you afraid.
JONG I don’t think I’m afraid anymore. (EMJ makes choking sounds.)
REHM Erica is having a little problem with her throat. She’s just put a lozenge in her mouth. Let me give you time to relax and get your voice back, have a little sip of water …
JONG Endless book tour. In fact I am not afraid of dying.
REHM You’re not. Good, I’m glad to hear that.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Scat
PG turned off the canned noise, and opened a window. Sometimes the pitter patter of rain is the best background sound. It was christmas eve eve, and PG is trying to write a book report on Scat, a “book for young readers” by Carl Hiassen.
PG found Scat on the internet, pun intended, and had a copy sent to the Chamblee library. When he learned of the juvenile intention, PG decided to read until he got bored. Veteran Hiassenites can tell you this will not happen until the book is finished, and the blank pages appear. The spell check suggestion for Hiassenite is Whiteness.
One amazon one star review disagrees. jayess99 Is anyone else sick of adults writing like and about children? This book was great for about the first two pages, and then it morphed into a kid’s tale. Why don’t they advertise it as such? Because they want your DAMN MONEY, that’s why! They dont give a hoot if you actually like the book, they just want your money. Think about it – why else would he even write this dross unless he just wanted your money?
Evidently, there is a British version of Scat, with British slang substituted for American. Just a guy from France was not amused. “Since the book takes place in FLORIDA, even the most insulated British kid is going to know that people there speak American English and I would expect that British kids would find themselves puzzled at least, and those who wanted to read an *American* book would feel cheated by this Bowdlerized bastardized abortion of a book.”
Scat is similar to the adult books written by Mr. Unpronounceable. The plot is set in Florida, and has more twists and turns than the flying spaghetti monster’s beard. There is endangered Florida wilderness, dastardly criminals, well meaning ordinary citizens, and weirdos. There is a degenerate who listens to classical music, and has a macaw that speaks English, French, and German.
The story starts in the classroom of the biology teacher from hell… don’t worry, she has a heart of gold. BTFH leads the class on a field trip, only to be interrupted by a fire in the swamp. Mrs. Starch goes into a burning swamp to find an asthma inhaler, and does not come out for a few weeks. It should be noted that normal people do not go in burning swamps to find an asthma inhaler. Things happen in Scat that require a suspension of disbelief, but are necessary to advance the plot.
When a teacher cannot show up for class, there is a substitute. In this case, the fill in instructor is a weirdo, Wendell Waxmo has unusual methods. On Monday, he teaches page 117 of the book. On Thursday, it is page 329, and Friday features page 263. PG decided to skip ahead, and read the page of the day. Telling you what happens on these three pages is a good way to summarize the plot of Scat. This is using the “BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF.” It is a hard back first edition, Copyright ©2009 by Carl Hiassen.
Page 117 has a conversation with Nick and Marta. They are students of Mrs. Starch, who take an inexplicable role in the investigation after the swamp fire. Marta has seen the Prius that Mrs. Starch drives. Some strange man is driving. A classmate of Marta’s, Smoke, is in the passenger seat. Smoke, the son of the the tri-lingual macaw owner, is suspected of setting the swamp fire.
You probably think that Nick and Marta are a couple. You might be wrong, This is a book for young readers, and does not have the hanky panky that Hiassenites have come to expect. Most people in Scat have had bad marriages. Nobody seems to have sex. The only happy couple is Nick’s parents…. daddy just got back from combat duty in Iraq, minus his right arm
The Thursday class, featuring page 329, takes place on page 159. When you skip ahead to page 329, what you see will not make sense. The fourth and fifth words on the page are “Mrs. Starch,” which tells you the witch is still alive. Smoke, Marta, and Nick are present, along with a panther cub. When you look at this page when you are supposed to, it makes a bit more sense. This is when the various plot lines are hurtling towards a conclusion, and the reader is having too much fun.
On page 263, Twilley Spree is looking for a panther. Mr. Spree is another weirdo, albeit with lots of money. Out of nowhere, a pile of equipment and supplies appears. Someone is trying to dig an oil well, on land that belongs to the State of Florida. This is highly illegal, and is central to the plot of Scat. Twilley Spree decides to teach someone a lesson. What is the lesson, and who are the students? Spolier alerts are for babies. Pictures from The Library of Congress.
So this report has eleven paragraphs. If it is going to have rainbow text, there needs to be at least one more paragraph. Maybe we should consider spending $21.95 for Scat: Novel-Ties Study Guide. The “Most Helpful Customer Reviews,” which is also the only review, gives SNTSG four stars. lydia “I would recommend this study guide for Scat to other teachers. My only criticism is that the vocabulary activities are matching. Excellent literary analysis activities are included in this study guide. There are also extension activities that enrich the novel study experience.”
Tibetan Peach Pie Part Four
Thomas Eugene Robbins was working in a Seattle radio station when Charles Manson came to self promote. This is on page 241 of Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life. TER drops a quote from Henry Miller, who is talking about Arthur Rimbaud. “like a man who discovered electricity but knew absolutely nothing about insulation.” Or maybe the insulation was made of asbestos, and whose removal would cost exponentially more than installation.
TER passed on the chance to discover Mr. Manson, which may have been a good move. Before long, TER found himself in the same facility as the doors. TER says he found his writing voice that night. “Their sound is the sonic equivalent of Edgar Allen Poe going down on the Snake Woman, while Jean Genet and the Boston Strangler cut cards for leftovers.”
About this time, TER began work on Another Roadside Attraction, the novel that would make him famous. He spent the week in South Bend WA, and weekends working at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. This is perhaps the most pretentious newspaper name in history, even for the Hearst corporation. TER spent those weekends in a flophouse, the Apex hotel, whose wallpaper would have sent Oscar Wilde screaming into eternity.
Soon ARA was published, ignored in hardback, but became an underground sensation in paperback. This was the first TER book that PG read. One of those paperbacks was at a yard sale, a few days after PG saw the Rolling Stone piece. After paying the fifteen cents, PG took the book home. On page three, Amanda asks someone about the meaning of life, or something equally goofy. The man asks what she will do in return. Amanda batted her eyelashes, and said the she would suck off the man.
At that point, PG knew that he wanted to finish ARA. Many people say it is the best TER book, and PG is inclined to agree. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was made into a movie, and the ones after cowgirls all had their charms. The latter books, while tons of fun, have the air of contractual obligation. The lifestyle described in the latter part of TPP must be expensive to maintain. Still, ARA is what made the rest of them possible. Included in this is the move to La Conner WA, made April 1, 1970. TER says to make all moves on April 1. Especially when moving out of a town whose mayor supplemented his income by selling men’s suits out of an Oldsmobile. The suits were stolen off cadavers by enterprising funeral directors, who left the underwear behind.
Before long it is 1971. TER is settled into La Conner WA, except when he puts a duck mask to see a proctologist. The word legendary comes into play. This affable adjective it is misused, misunderstood, and mistaken. It is similar to the contemporary compulsion to decry racism and terrorism. What this has to do with the Chelsea Hotel is a good question. This is where TER stayed, while editors shehawed over Cowgirls. Maybe the editors were legendary racist terrorists.
So Cowgirls comes out, and is a hit. Still Life with Woodpecker, though not as much fun as the first two, is an even bigger hit. TER goes through money, women, and drugs, not always in that order. (TER says he never wrote while intoxicated. However lubricated reality was in his off hours, while on the clock he was straight and narrow.) This can be tracked in his stories. In ARA, the characters realize that alcohol is an imperfect drug. In Woodpecker, cocaine is in fashion. In the post Woodpecker days, alcohol is used more and more.
On page 330, PG is in the Kroger parking lot, waiting on a rider to finish shopping. This passage was written by hand. (TER likes to write with a pen, while PG is hopeless away from a keyboard.) A scribble pad, with a Thoreau quote on the cover, was used. … While reading TPP in Kroger PL, I saw the way the sun fell on some brick columns. I got the camera to take pics. Meanwhile TER is meeting Love of Life#4. The batteries on the camera ran out before I was finished…
The lady friend is still connected to TER. They met in 1987, on page 333 of TPP. Half the antichrist, which somehow that seems like a happy accident. The book has 362 pages, and the clever turns of phrase are fewer and fewer. This will probably be the last installment of the chamblee54 appropriation of TPP. Parts one, two, and three have already seen the light of day. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. They were taken during the War Between the States.
Tibetan Peach Pie Part Three
When PG last saw Thomas Eugene Robbins, he was living in Richmond VA. This was around the time Mary Lou, aka the human wrecking ball, went into a crowded bar and yelled “Anyone here want to fuck?” This was the Eisenhower era version. Thirty years before this, Babe Ruth stood up on a chair. “Any girl that doesn’t want to fuck can leave now.”
Fifteen pages later, TER marries another young lady. The proposal came after knowing each other five minutes. Four and a half minutes of that time was TER denouncing her for having the bad manners to walk out of a TER poetry reading. At the time, TER was dating an art student with protective parents. When the young lady was in the hospital, TER decides to impersonate a doctor, so he could give the lady a private exam. To perform this maneuver, TER stole a white jacket that was too big for him. The jacket was so ill fitting as to resemble “a horse blanket draped over a poodle.”
TER worked for a newspaper. One job was editing Earl Wilson’s column, and choosing photographs. This was an entertainment column, about who was doing what where and how. Why was left to the reader’s imagination. Mr. Wilson wrote a three b report, for booze, bosoms, and behinds.
Sometimes, Mr. Wilson wrote about entertainers of color. In many southern establishments, this part was edited out. TER went against the tide, and chose black and white pictures of a sepia trinity: Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey, and Sammy Davis. The collective drawers of Richmond twisted into an painful puppy pile. TER hastily moved to Seattle.
Arriving in the Northwest, TER stumbled into a job as a concert reviewer for the Seattle Times. This was despite not knowing what he was talking about. The prose was “colorful,” though not in the Earl Wilson way. TER got into mushroom hunting, and heard tales about magic mushrooms. A bit of checking around ensued, and some learned man told TER to take LSD instead. This substance was still legal, and had yet to develop notoriety. Diane Linkletter kept the window shut.
Here is a bit of confusion. In High Times and Rolling Stone, the date of the first TER trip was July 16, 1963. Tibetan Peach Pie, the book that inspires this orgy of quote abuse, says it was July 1964. Who to believe? Does it make a difference? Actually, it does. In those 366 leap year inclusive days, Martin Luther King had a dream, John Kennedy met his maker, The Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show, and Cassius Clay whipped Sonny Liston. The world was a differnt, less innocent. but more musical place. Ed Sullivan wore a Beatle wig, taking really big shoe tonight into unknown territory.
The psychedelic experience is aggressively non verbal. (p.197) “…even a professional novelist can scarcely write about it it without swathing his observations in the purple cloak of woo woo.” At one point, TER went inside a flower. “The crown of the daisy is a perfect logarithmic helix. My eyes followed that spiral, around and around, until — pop! — I actually went into the flower. What was it like in there? It was a subterranean cathedral made out of mathematics and honey, and occupied — this is the amazing part — by an almost palpable intelligence… Now, a man-made bean can is hardly a living plant, but what I’ve come to appreciate about inanimate objects, aside from their utilitarian beauty, is the whisper of the Infinite in each and every one of them. I’d better shut up now before the woo-woo alarms go off.”
A can of beans was one of the players in Skinny Legs And All. PG read SLAA while working in an architect’s office. A can of baked beans was placed on a shelf for motivation. After he finished reading SLAA, PG ate the contents of the can of beans. A young lady heard about the use of baked beans as a grounding device, and did not understand. After finishing SLAA, PG told the young lady that he had eaten the can of beans. She was not amused.
After that fateful LSD afternoon, TER had little interest in reading or writing. This can be inconvenient for a music critic expecting to get paid. This printed word hiatus was broken when TER read Steppenwolf. This was probably before the band shipped out “born to be wild.” Steppenwolf is a book to read at twnty one, and think you are changed forever, then read again at fifty one, and realize you need to change your underwear.
This business of expanding consciousness is not conducive to the real world. Eventually, TER left Seattle, and took his wife back to Richmond. TER went to live in New York. At a LEMAR protest … something to do with legalize marijuana … TER met Allen Ginsberg. “I glanced around with increasing nervousness as the cameras of a half-dozen law-enforcement agencies flashed amidst the snowflakes like orbs of mad polar bears. … Ginsberg, that magnificent pothead of the godhead, laid a gentle hand on my shoulder and said, “Don’t worry about it.” … “In the long run, these fuzzy shots in some cop’s folder will do you more honor than the cover of Newsweek.” The poet then kissed TER, who was back in Seattle before you could say Tetra Hydra Cannabinol.
Maybe it was a sermon about mammon. The other day on facebook, someone was ranting about something, and calling his output a sermon. PG wrote a comment… “is there a gender neutral replacement for sermon and mammon.” (PG forgot to hit post, which is why there was no snarky reply.) When Mr. Ginsberg was Howling his way to fame, mammon was regarded as “wealth regarded as an evil influence or false object of worship and devotion.” Money is not only the root of all evil, but the stalk, leaves, and, last but not least, the fruit.
Alas, there is no connection between mammon and ma’am. There is no commingled origin for sir and sermon, or, for that matter, amen and men. They are already non binary, and fit for use by both cis and trans. Some people just have to make everything about sex.
Maybe this is a good time to adjourn this meeting. This is part three, of the chamblee54 certification of Tibetan Peach Pie. Parts one and two have already been distributed. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
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