Elinor Nauen

Hosting a monthly reading series requires some amount of coordination & energy; all the more do I admire folks who put together more frequent readings. Prose Pros, my series with Martha King, is in its 7th season and still as fun to us as it was at the start.

Some combos seem implausible but work great: Last night a dynamic young fiction writer, Bradley Spinelli, read from his novel Killing Williamsburg and from a new novel set in Thailand (finish it already!), followed by Ruth Danon, who's writing a thoughtful memoir about her family, which comprised refugees, revolutionaries, scientists, artists and feuders. The two writers' themes of dislocation and exile echoed & enhanced each other—something I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't heard them together.

We have a nice crowd every month, with a few people that come no matter who the reader is (looking at you, Mike!). A group that listens, laughs, asks, cheers.  Read More 

Instead of taking a karate class this morning, I retraced my bike route twice, hoping the keys that fell off my handlebar on the way to the dojo would still be lying wherever they fell.

But no, some concerned citizen thought they were doing me a solid by picking them up. Then what? If  Read More 

Now that I've finished Devil in the Grove, I have a little more to say.

I was talking about the book with a young black man at the gym. He asked if I'd ever witnessed a racist incident. I couldn't really think of any: because they didn't happen or because I don't  Read More 

But hey, this is my new polka dot nail polish.

Yes, different on each hand.

I've been reading the 2013 Pulitzer winner, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, by Gilbert King. It centers on a 1949 case in Florida similar to the Scottsboro boys in Alabama, at a time when any white person's word was taken over any black's, and a white woman crying rape would almost inevitably lead to a lynching. The trouble also sprang from the economic conditions at the time: Citrus growers depended on peonage, with the KKK and violent lawmen like Lake County's sheriff, Willis McCall (who held that elected office until  Read More 

I don't have a great sense of direction. I still get lost in the neighborhood where I've lived for more than 3 decades, and don't have any instinct for which way is north or east. I think it came from growing up on the prairie, where there's no monument to orient yourself by. When I lived in Colorado for a year in my 20s, I thought that everyone from Denver must always know which way is which, since the mountains instill west as a matter of instinct, like getting perfect pitch by practicing as a baby.

I can read a map so I don't always get lost.  Read More 

Johnny woke up moaning. "Ugh, I was up half the night." He wondered if it might be due to the fish tacos he ate last night at a bar near us.

A really grim bar, I might add.

"Fish tacos? There? What did you expect?" I said sympathetically.

"But they were only a dollar."

Nice to be reminded that even in Manhattan there are lots of pretty growing things

What a treat to spend a little time this afternoon at the Loretta Howard Gallery, way west on 26th St, looking at some of the art (and bric-a-brac) John Ashbery has collected over the years. Unsurprisingly (for an art critic), he has good taste: there are several Joseph Cornells (not my faves, except for one that's a plain almost empty, weathered box called "The Storm that Never Came"), and works by Henry Dargar, Joe Brainard, Trevor Winkfield, de Kooning (both Willem & Elaine), Joan Mitchell (Johnny's favorite), and a beautiful Jane Freilicher "Peonies"—probably the single work I most would want.

Except wow things really cost a lot. "Inflation," Johnny snorted. Hey we have Brainards at our house. Johnny also had a little drawing Larry Rivers did as a cover sketch for Johnny's novel Mangled Hands, but he lost it.

Well-chosen excerpts from Ashbery's poems make it homey, as in You Are There in his pad. The show is there till November 2.  Read More 

Don't ever get in an accident, because not only does it hurt but you will have to talk to insurance companies for the rest of your life, and you might cry, and you might see steam coming out of your ears you will be so angry, and you might get so exhausted that you can't do any of the fun things that you are put here to do.  Read More 

One of the best books on Southern music I've read is Rythm Oil, by Stanley Booth.

Not just music but the 1950s onward, what it's like to hang with musicians like Furry Lewis and his wife Versie, ZZ Top, and Keith Richards, or go to the funeral of Mississippi John Hurt as a sort of insider (he was asked to speak).

Booth is a good reporter & researcher: for example, this quote from a Memphis pianist about Phineas Newborn Jr: "He had a boogie-woogie left hand, a bebop right hand, and this... third hand." A good writer too, describing Newborn's style as that of Secretariat or the young Muhammad Ali. "He could think of things to do that no one else had ever done, and then he would do them." Maybe my favorite moment is when he says to Fred Ford, "I can't believe I'm sittin' next to the man who barked like a dog at the end of Big Mama Thornton's 'Hound Dog.'" And Fred Ford says, "I was gonna meow like a cat, but it was too hip for 'em."

Elvis, B.B. King, Janis and so many more are respectfully and appreciatively described. He knows his stuff! The Trumpeteers, man!  Read More 

What a year for people dying. But Lou Reed! Seems unlikely, more than anything. I saw him perform in London in 1979 (I'm pretty sure that was the first time), & around town in subsequent years. He was our downtown Mick Jagger. As present & obvious as Katz's Deli. I bet half the people I know  Read More 

Just finished a memoir about hoarding, Coming Clean by Kimberly Rae Miller. Remarkable that she grew up in the chaos of her father's mental illness, in filth & fleas, yet still loved her parents staunchly, protectively, sweetly.

Could her dad help it? Alcoholics stop drinking, gamblers stop lighting their money on fire. An interesting take on this is  Read More 

Dropped by MoMA this afternoon to breeze through two shows & look even more briefly at a couple of others (Hopper, a chair made of white corrugated paper).

Luckily, Johnny's a member so the claustrophobia was a little lessened by getting waved through the long lines. I found it hard to be alone with the art when there was so little space to stare & absorb.

Predictably I liked Walker Evans's junkyards & old cars the best. As I've written before, I find shabby to be both soothing & inspiring.  Read More 

OK, I'm not going to make this blog a rolodex of the dead, but want to note that the poet Frank Lima died a day or two ago. "Raw, gritty, nervy and switchblade-quick," as Tom Clark called him, he was born in Spanish Harlem in 1939, and accidentally fell into poetry while in drug rehab. After that it fell out of him dangerous & gorgeous.  Read More 

It's 40 years—October 22, 1973—since one of my closest friends died. Lucy Kerschberger was 22, in London on a Marshall fellowship, and apparently had an aneurysm. She was a talented writer with a throaty chuckle that belied her fragile blond prettiness. I still feel such pangs of sorrow, but no longer know if it's for the  Read More 

Noting the death today of Lawrence Klein, 93. In 1980, the year he won the Nobel in Economics, I was working for someone who was working for Klein at the Wharton School in Philly. The Phillies were in a pennant race that year, and in a great examples of first things first, the headline in one of the Philadelphia papers ran: "Phillies Fan Wins Nobel Prize."  Read More 

I love my cousins, and I love the idea of cousins: people you're closely related to but with enough of a distance to ensure politeness. Cousins have the resemblances and antecedents of siblings, without the in-fighting.I have five first cousins, but innumerable more at one, two or more removes. We all call each other FC ("favorite cousin"). Another pleasure is the many cross-generational friendships among my cousins. I have quite a few courtesy cousins, too, people who are family enough to merit that designation.

Today is my sister Varda's birthday. She would be my main FC if she were my cousin. And that's as good as I can do.  Read More 

Slate has been debating: is it "victim blaming" to tell women to be careful, don't get drunk & all that? Shouldn't we, rather, address the rapists & a culture that tells (white) men they are more important than anyone else? (Does it have to be one or the other?)

If men rape because they feel entitled  Read More 

Johnny just brought over 3 boxes of materials that had been in storage for over 25 years where he used to work.

Mag City, Hard Press, Telephone, Big Sky: lots of small press mags. Some much older treasures too: early works by Michael Brownstein, Tom Clark, Ron Padgett. Many I've never seen before. All in good condition.

Now that they've been wrapped in tissue paper all this time, I feel reluctant to put my grimy paws on them.  Read More 

"We managed to divide ourselves on something we were unified on, over a goal that wasn't achievable," said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri. —from today's New York Times.

This is so obvious, even if you were barely paying attention, that one wonders how they could be so oblivious. It's amazing how bad at their jobs so many of these guys are. No wonder so many people figure they may as well run for Congress.

There's a book by Paul (Snow Goose) Gallico called Mrs. 'arris Goes to Parliament, in which the parties collude on who they both want as MP so they throw a charlady in as a sure loss. She wins, however, but quits soon after, once she realizes there's more to the job than just being elected.  Read More 

This is the remains of my breakfast this morning at B&H, the best diner in the world. Mmmm, challah french toast—although today I had an apple-cheddar omelette. Almost the first people to visit Johnny in the hospital last year were Mike & Leo, who every day would send Johnny a juice or a sandwich, along with great love & concern. I finally had to threaten never to come in again unless they let me pay.  Read More 

Quite by chance, I ran across this remarkable title in the catalogue of the New York public library:

Janey: Being the Record of A Short Interval in the Journey through Life and the Struggle with Society of A Little Girl of Nine, in Which She Repudiates Her Duties as An Amateur Mother, Snares the Most Blundering of Birds, Successfully Invades Grub Street, Tracks the Smallest and Blindest of Gods, Peers behind the Veil of the Seen into the Unseen, Interprets the Great Bard, Grubs at the Root of All Evil, Faces the Three Great Problems, Birth, Death, Love, and Finally, in Passing through the Laborious Process of Becoming Ten, Discovers the Great Illusion.

Janey is by a writer I (thought I) had never heard of, Inez Haynes Gillmore. Turns out she was a feminist leader and political activist, who lived to be 97 (1873-1970). She was a co-founder of the National Collegiate Equal Suffrage League and a member of the National Advisory Council of the National Women’s Party.  Read More 

Here's what two excellent & essential poets are up to:

A Review, an Interview, and Poems by Andrei Codrescu at the link under his photo, from the LA Review of Books. Go there & read everything, OK?

And a hilarious & deep interview with Sparrow at (sorry, you have to paste in the link) http://metroland.net/2013/10/09/learning-to-be/

I'd say more but I have to go get a manicure—
 Read More 

If Melville had written only Typee (& Omoo, I suppose), what would we think of him now? An entertaining writer who gave us an intriguing peep at 19th-century life in Polynesia? But a writer of no especial promise, not someone who would blow our minds a few years later with Moby Dick. What the hell happened?  Read More 

Kinda liked having a day where I didn’t so much as get dressed. I did sit in Maggie’s Breakfast Nook, on the fire escape, with my coffee and a book, but other than that, I lay around. Today it’s back to activities and obligations, renewed by the rest.

Elinor Nauen at night? That would be an oversize t-shirt & fuzzy socks. Black? Goes without saying. This is the East Village.

This beautiful church is around the corner from me. (Sorry: the photo doesn't do it justice at all.) I've been in there once or twice. I don't know much about Eastern (Russian) Orthodoxy, just that there are no pews—you stand for the whole service, which isn't short.

The thing about New York is that everything you want is here, with the obvious non-urban exceptions. Sometimes it seems like that "everything" is right on my block. This beautiful church, Anthology Film Archives, celebrity restaurants, Manhattan Mini Storage, Gringers Appliances, the late Boca Chica, East Village Radio, and more—they're all on this one block (1st & 2nd aves between 1st & 2nd streets & vice versa).  Read More 

My friend Avery told me she'd lived in 22 places by the time she was 20. Here's my history:
Born at 1503 S. Summit Avenue, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

When I was 11 or 12, we moved kitty-corner across the street to 812 W. 23rd.

Left at 18 for Snyder-Phillips Hall (part of the residential college Justin Morrill, which was actually pretty cool, even tho I hated college & dropped out ASAP)

The House in Severn, MD, which I shared with a bunch of Air Force guys I met at an antiwar demonstration in D.C.

Briefly back to Michigan & then Sioux Falls, where I bought Ernest, a 1950 Dodge schoolbus, which I lived in for the next year in Sioux Falls, Rapid City (SD), Denver, Boulder & Longmont, Colorado.

Then LeRoy, a 1954 Ford F-100, on which we built  Read More 

When Doug & Alice moved to Paris in 1992, Alice gave me a fancy coat, a hand-me-down from Lita Hornick, & a book of Troubador poems; Doug gave me a set of the works of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94), 26 volumes published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1903. As with the Encyclopedia Britannica, I know that I could get the complete Stevenson on my iPod for a buck or 2, but these are beautiful & pristine and make me wonder who else besides Doug ever opened them.

Stevenson, by the way, is a really good writer, who had pretty enlightened politics. Yesterday in Across the Plains, he deplored the prejudice against the Chinese ("Their forefathers watched the stars before mine had begun to keep pigs") and Indians ("a chapter of injustice and indignity such as a man must be in some ways base if his heart will suffer him to pardon or forget").  Read More