Well. Now. Where were we before I engaged in a 3-day
exercise in narcissism (like a personal blog isn't the epitome of narcissism!)
I have decided, BTW, to finish my story. Since I posted it here, I've been
going this way and that with where to take it. I think I've figured out what I want
to do, so I'll work on it. When it's finished, I'll post the end of it. Don't
hold your breath!
We are two days away from the end of our long national nightmare.
No matter which candidate you support, you have to admit that the
escalation of political ads, talking heads, polls, robo calls and all of it has been a
long nightmare. I've decided that I"m tired of listening to Chris Matthew, Joe
Scarborough, Rachel Maddow, Jim Leherer, and any other talking head so I'm going to spend
election night on Comedy Central, where Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will be covering
the election. I'm sure I will get just the same level of information, and it will be
more fun.
And then, depending on which candidate wins and which you supported,
either our nightmare will finally be over completely or just beginning all over
again.
One day without seeing an ad for Dr. Ami Bera alone will be like six
hours at the seaside.
It was a fun week at the book store. Sales have been kind of
slow on Thursdays, apparently, but they were brisk this week. I think Peter had 4
sales Thursday morning and I had about 20 in the afternoon. I also made the
acquaintance of a woman whose name I have known for all the years I have been in Davis.
We know a lot of the same people and she was a deightful person.
She is a member of one of the book clubs in town that has been going
on for years. Over the years I have encountered either friends or neighbors or
co-workers who have been in long-term book clubs and who just rave about how they have
changed their lives, how they made their best friends there, how they were more like
support groups than book clubs. They sit around and drink wine and talk about each
other's lives and what they are all reading. Each time someone brought up the
subject of their book club, I always said, rather wistfully, I thought, that I always
wanted to be in a book club. And unanimously they change the subject. Kind of like
flunking "rush" at the local sorority.
I fear it's a bit too late to find that kind of rapport and lifelong
friends in a book club as I would have if I had been invited to join one in my 30s, though
my two meetings with the club in Sacramento were nice and I recognized a couple of people
at the second meeting, though I don't remember anybody's name yet. Still it was nice
to be able to talk books with other people reading the same thing.
This was the book I read at the store while I was there this week.
It's actually a book I've had here at home for along time, but never
got around to reading it. But we were going to see the stage version of the book and
I thought it would be a good opportunity to read it.
Didion's husband died of a heart attack suddenly one night as she was
mixing the salad for dinner. The book details her travel through grief during that
first awful year, a year in which her daughter was also dying of many infections in many
hospitals (she finally did die the following year).
The book (which won a Pulitzer prize) is raw and filled with emotion,
but also contains a lot of wry humor, as Didion laughs at herself for some of her feelings
-- like her reluctance to give away her husband's shoes several weeks after his death
because "he'll need them when he comes back."
We saw the play, adapted by Didion herself, which is very faithful to
the book. The incredible Janis Stevens, a local treasure, plays Didion in this
one-woman play.
I've read several reviews of the show when Vanesssa Redgrave did it
in New York. You can pretty much tell which critics have had personal experience
with a painful death and which have not.
No comments:
Post a Comment