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This morning Jane was showing me her coin collection, which contains a number of interesting specimens thanks to our world-traveling pal Keri. She has coins from Vietnam, India, Singapore, China, Korea, Japan, and a bunch of other places. We couldn’t figure out where a few of them came from, so we started Googling and figured out which ones came from Korea and which came from China.
The third coin described in this post is one of the Korean coins she was trying to figure out, with a spear of rice on one face. Another coin had writing on it that looked like Greek to Jane, so she took it to Rose for help translating the letters. Rho, iota, eta, they thought—and then a character neither of them recognized, and they brought it to me, and I looked at the other side of the coin and saw EIRE, so I knew it was from Ireland. Not Greek letters after all.
It took a bit of hunting, but we tracked that one down online too and read some interesting things about Irish coins. The one Jane has is a penny, but it seems so big compared to our U.S. pennies, almost the size of a quarter. It has a hen with chicks on it, and there’s a bit of history about some of these hen-and-chick pennies missing one of the chicks. Jane’s has all the chicks.
We saw that there are books with pictures of all the world coins in them, and Jane checked the library to see if there were any copies in our system. There are, and one was in a branch nearby. So after Wonderboy’s speech therapy session, we swung by the library and Jane got her book. Rose got the new Gail Carson Levine, and Beanie emerged from the stacks clutching an Edward Eager novel. I just finished reading Half Magic to her yesterday, or was it the day before? Oh, we had such a good time with that book. Jane was the one who hunted up Knight’s Castle for her, and Beanie nearly crushed her ribs with gratitude.
On the way out of the library, I picked up a cheap Miss Marple collection from the sale rack. In the courtyard outside, there is a mighty old tree, fat-trunked, low-branched, limbs spread wide to beckon small girls with new books. All three girls clambered up and commenced a-reading, while Rilla and Wonderboy (oh gosh, I really do need to come up with a new blog name for him: he’s getting too big for this) hunted bugs at the base of the tree. I sat on the grass, enjoying the peaceful moment. An elderly woman pushed her walker toward us and paused for a chat. “I’ve been watching you since you came out of the library,” she said. She approved of the tree-climbing and the book-reading. “I’m happy to see a mother bring her children to the library. If you read,” she told Jane, “you can do anything you want in life.” She inspected our haul and listened to the whole coin-identification story. She noticed the boy’s hearing aids and we compared notes; she just started wearing them herself. Then her cell phone rang, and she said her daughter had arrived to pick her up, and she bid each child a cordial farewell and departed. “I hope,” she called back to me, “that you have a very nice life.”
This diary has no interesting story to tell, no tales of derringdo.Last spring I went on a short cruise along the Mediterranean coast and every day, in my spare time, I jotted down things I’d seen and thought. In fact what I saw was water, sun, cloud, and rocks and that’s all. I had only simple thoughts, the kind you have when you’re being carried drowsily along on the cradle of the waves.
Q: Does it aggravate you when people ask you how someone as young
as you are can create a novel with so much emotional depth and
complexity, or do you look upon it as a compliment?
A: I think some people are confused not so much by the emotional depth,
but with the concept of how someone so young can have anything to write
about in terms of life experience, and that’s fine. I’ve been lucky
enough to have lived in six American states, in Scotland and England,
and held over twenty-five jobs. That emotional depth comes from having
a lot of different experiences, but that’s not a necessity for writing,
really. A lot of Canadian and U.K. writers publish in their twenties . . . I’d like to think Afloat stands alone as a novel, regardless of
my age. Most readers won’t know it was written when I was twenty-four.
If you missed the cameo appearance of The Invention of Morelon Lost last week, there'll be another chance to the episode tonight.
Elsewhere, the internet is abuzz with discussion about the book: "Fugitives? Island? Anomalies? I see a pattern here!" Wondering what else shows up on the character Ben's bookshelf? "[The plot] sounds a bit familiar, no?" Ever read a book just because it's appeared on Lost? An entry on the "Lostpedia" that could use some fleshing out. The Mother Jones blog is discussingLost? Isn't there an election to cover? A reader suggests a story by Bioy Casare's friend and collaborator Borges that might prove fascinating to Lost viewers: "'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,' which is about a decades-old conspiracy to make an imaginary world 'real.'"
and so on...
In researching all of this, I uncovered another NYRB–Lost connection. A while ago, we mentioned that Frigyes Karinthy, whose memoir of surgery, A Journey Round My Skull, we'll soon be publishing, is frequently credited with the now-ubiquitous (and recently disproven?) proposition that all people are connected to each other by only six degrees. Now I see that Karinthy is mentioned in the Season 2 Bonus disk for Lost. On the disk, writer-producer Carlton Cruse, in voice-over, asks:
"Have you ever sat next to someone at a bar and felt that your paths
have crossed before? Has the thought ever crossed your mind that the
stranger behind you at the store would become a significant part of
your life? In 1929, a Hungarian writer (Frigyes Karinthy) put forth the
idea that anyone of us could name any one person among the earth's
billions of inhabitants and through, at most 5 acquaintances, connect
that person back to themselves. He called it 'The Theory of
Centrality.'"
Hmmm. Who knows what other connections lurk in the pages of the Lostpedia?
Our resident Lost insider, Chad Post, tipped us off a while ago to the presence of one of our books, The Invention of Morelby Adolfo Bioy Casares in the Lost episode that airs on February 21 ("Eggtown," episode 4, season 4). In fact, Chad's been talking about the similarities between Moreland Lost for some time (conspiracy theory anyone?). Today he sends something even more thrilling, a preview of the episode in which a character (Sawyer) is reading the book, and appears loath to be torn away from it. Is it because it reveals the secrets of the island?
Read a summary of The Invention of Morel and find some links to related pages on an earlier post.
One of he most heartening things about staffing the NYRB table in the nosebleed stands of the AWP was the popularity of books that have been, to put it kindly, something less than popular.
Most notably, several people came over to us expressly to get a hold of David Jones's highly-allusive modernist prose-poem memoir of World War I, In Parenthesis.
Jones enlisted in the army at the age of 19
From W.S. Merwin's introduction:
As a “war book” In Parenthesis is incomparable. In his account of those months of stupefying discomfort, fatigue, and constant fear in the half-flooded winter trenches, and then of the mounting terror and chaos of the July assault on Mametz Wood, David Jones made intimate and inimitable use of sensual details of every kind, from sounds, sights, smells, and the racketing and shriek of shrapnel set against the constant roar of artillery, to snatches of songs overheard or remembered, reflections on pools of mud, the odors of winter fields of beets blown up by explosives, the way individual soldiers carried themselves at moments of stress or while waiting. All of these become part of the “nowness” that Jones said was indispensable to the visual arts. The resulting powerful and intense evocation, however, occurs in what seems like a vast echo chamber where the reverberations resound from the remote antiquity of military activities, and of the language and mythology of Britain, from Shakespeare’s Histories, in English, and from the poems, conflicts, and divinities of the more venerable traditions of Wales and the Welsh, and from the legacy, civil, political, and military, of the Roman occupation of the island, some remnant of which Arthur himself had fought to preserve.
Merwin mentions Jones's beliefs about the visual arts because Jones was as much an artist as he was a poet. He drew from an early age and studied under Walter Sickert. But perhaps the most important influence in life as an artist was fellow Catholic-covert Eric Gill. In the 1920s Jones lived with the Gill family, illustrating books and experimenting with different print making styles. He was even engaged to one of Gill's daughters for a time.
The illustration on the cover of In Parenthesis is a detail of a drawing of Jones's that belongs in the collection of the Tate Britain. He was also involved with the design and typesetting of the interior of In Parenthesis, of which the NYRB edition is a facsimile.
A book with an animal in its title Hawks figure prominently
The Peregrine The Pilgrim Hawk The Goshawk Memed, My Hawk The Tiger in the House The Stuffed Owl The Glass Bees The Fox in the Attic My Dog Tulip
A book with a first name in its title Eliminating biographies
The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes The Late Mattia Pascal Memed, My Hawk Cassandra at the Wedding Mary Olivier: A Life The World of Odysseus René Leys Mawrdew Czgowchwz The Life of Henry Brulard The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll Hadrian the Seventh Alfred and Guinevere Lolly Willowes Jakob von Gunten Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself
Last August saw us trying to overcome our late-summer doldrums by indulging in the pleasures of free internet radio—and the NYRB Classics groupat Last.fm was born.
Thus far there are 19 members in the group. Not too bad. But 20 would be a much nicer number.
What has the group been listening to? Click here to find out for yourself.
Photo: Statue of Karinthy in the rose garden in Siófok, Hungary
Those of you who follow the Classics list might be aware that the next few seasons will be full of the best Hungarian literature to be had (this is a purely commercial decision: we're convinced that Budapest will finally dethrone Paris as the destination Americans dream of). Our first Magyar masterpiece was Gyula Krudy's Sunflower. Gyula appears to be a common Hungarian name, both first and last, as a certain Mr. Gyula Gyulas could no doubt tell you. I had assumed that the name was the Magyar version of Julius, but a note at the start of "The Gyulas Hold a Council" chapter in Frigyes Karinthy's A Journey Round My Skull got me wondering about its origin:
In very early times, the "gyulas" were counselors who advised the Magyar chieftain on matters of war and policy. The word is now of frequent occurrence as a Christian name."
In fact, more research shows that in the 9th century Hungary practiced a dual Kingship system: with the gyula as military ruler and the kende as religious leader. According to Miklos Menar's Concise History of Hungary, the Magyars borrowed this formation from the Khazars. In the division of secular and religious rule, the system sounds not unlike those of present-day Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Since Karinthy himself is often credited with the idea that any two people are connected by no more than six degrees of separation (in the story "Chains"), it's worth noting that he also adapted one of Steven Leacock's Nonsense Novels, "Sorrows of a Super Soul" for the stage. Katalin Kürtösi quotes a description of the meeting of these two absurd minds in an essay about a recent revival of the production:
Leacock wrote an almost absurd parody ... This was
translated by Karinthy so that he made a parody of the parody.
Thanks to the ever-informative Literary Saloon at The Complete Review, we discovered that today is the centenary of Alberto Moravia's birth. The two Moravia books NYRB Classics publishes were among the very first books released in the series, and they were certainly two of the earliest books we knew we wanted to publish. In fact, it's fair to say that the complete unavailability of books by Moravia provided the impetus for the series: in compiling the second edition of The Reader's Catalog, the assembled experts repeatedly penciled-in various Moravias (impossible to have a list of the best Italian novels of the 20th century without including them!). But that catalog was only meant for works in print, thus no Moravias allowed.
For a taste of Moravia, here is an excerpt from Boredom concerning the hero's birthday celebration:
One day, not long after I had given up painting, I went to my mother’s house for the usual weekly luncheon. Actually it was rather a special luncheon; that day was my birthday, and my mother, in case I had forgotten this, had reminded me of it that same morning, giving me her good wishes by telephone in her strangely official and ceremonious manner: “Today you reach the age of thirty-five. I convey to you my sincere good wishes for your happiness and success.” She informed me at the same time that she had prepared a “surprise” for me. And so, about midday, I got into my old, dilapidated car and went off across the town with the usual feeling of uneasiness and repugnance that seemed to increase steadily as I drew nearer my goal. My heart more and more heavily oppressed with a weight of anguish, I at last turned into the Via Appia between the cypresses and pines and brick ruins which line its grassy banks. The gateway to my mother’s house was on the right, halfway along the Via Appia, and I looked out for it, half hoping, as usual, that by some miracle I should find it was no longer there, so that I could go straight on to the Castelli and then go back to Rome and return to my studio. However, there the gate was, thrown wide open especially for me, one might have thought, so as to stop me as I passed and swallow me up. I slowed down, turned sharply, and with a gentle, noiseless lurch entered the graveled drive, between two rows of cypresses. The drive rose gradually toward the villa, which could be seen at its far end; and as I looked at the small black cypresses with their dusty, curled foliage, and at the low, red house crouching beneath a sky full of fluffy gray clouds like lumps of dirty cotton wool, I was again conscious of the horror and consternation that assailed me each time I went to see my mother. It was a horror such as might be felt by a man who is preparing to commit an unnatural act; it was almost as though, as I turned into the drive, I were actually re-entering the womb that had given me birth. I sought to rid myself of this disagreeable feeling of retrogression by sounding my horn to announce my arrival. Then, after making a half circle on the gravel in front of the house, I stopped the car and jumped out. Almost immediately the glass door on the ground floor opened and a maid appeared on the doorstep.
The blog (in Italian) of the Moravia Centennial [link] put together by the Fondo Alberto Moravia [link]
The Paris Review interview with Moravia from 1954 [link]
Google "reading while listening to music" and you get a wide range of opinions from the folks at Physics Forums to David Cross. It is a little difficult to concentrate when you're reading and listening, unless . . . you have a plan.
Once the exclusive territory of mixtapes, anybody with a computer can now assign a songs over to a playlist and tinker with the results. So I decided to see if I could work out the soundtrack to Rogue Male without having finished the book.
The end result was fairly uneven, and I had to click through songs that didn't work, but it was kind of fun. And then it occurred to me that if someone else had read the book in advance, and made their own playlist for someone who hadn't read the book . . . well, it would probably be still fairly uneven, but it might be fun anyway.
If you have some song recommendations for our books, or better yet, a playlist, please comment!
Earlier this month, I wondered at the popularity of the recently published Patrick Leigh Fermor book A Time to Keep Silence and of The Little Bookroom's Quiet Corners of Paris. Now I'm beginning to think their success is no accident, but part of a more general yearning for quiet. Today is year three of No Music Day, a five-year effort in Britain to carve out one day of the year for silence, or at least, for a day of respite from the constant assault of background music. November 21st is the eve of the feast of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians.
J. Peder Zane has made the connection as well, although he sounds more in need of a No CNN Day, than a no music day. He sites Patrick Leigh Fermor's experience as well as Karen Armstrong's introduction to A Time to Keep Silence.
The hullabaloo of our hurly-burly world provides many passing
pleasures, but it is also a powerful tool of distraction. Silence
countervails such absent-mindedness. It leads us to think, to question.
That can be scary. T.S. Eliot wrote, 'And they write innumerable books;
being/ too vain and distracted for silence: seeking/ every one after
his own elevation, and/ dodging his emptiness.'"
Finally, earlier this year, Into Great Silence, a film about the abbey of the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps was praised all over the place. Shot without any artificial light, and no voice-over, the filmmaker (Philip Gröning) says,
"The film does not depict a monastery, but it transforms itself into a
monastery, because a monastery is a place where, through the rhythm of
time, which is very strict, and through [the monks'] confinement, the
spiritual space is opened up for them." [Quoted in The Boston Globe]
The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian by Nirad C. Chaudhuri "Reading this book is to be immersed in India, you feel you are living that life, such is the power of this acute, stubbornly honest, capaciously minded writer to recreate his times."
Patrick Hamilton "A marvellous novelist who's grossly neglected…I'm continually amazed that there's a kind of roll call of OK names from the 1930s, sort of Auden, Isherwood, etc. But Hamilton is never on them and he's a much better writer than any of them... [he] was very much outside the tradition of an upperclass or middle-class writer of that time. He wrote novels about ordinary people. He wrote more sense about England and what was going on in England in the 1930s than anybody else I can think of, and his novels are true now. You can go into any pub and see it going on."—The Times (London), 1968
The Education of a Gardenerby Russell Page “Page has written an astonishingly beautiful book about his craft.”
Shamelessness aside, the Classics list does boast two books written by bona-fide Nobel Prize–winners. Identify the laureate by his words:
1. Some of his favorite things: “Silence, the company of friends, unexpected honesty, reading, going to the pictures, dreams, uncluttered landscapes, city streets, faces, good food, cooking small meals, whisky, sex, pugs, the thought of an Australian republic, my ashes floating off at last.” [Answer]
2. "I think that life is a very sad piece of buffoonery; because we have in ourselves, without being able to know why, wherefore or whence, the need to deceive ourselves constantly by creating a reality (one for each and never the same for all), which from time to time is discovered to be vain and illusory.... My art is full of bitter compassion for all those who deceive themselves; but this compassion cannot fail to be followed by the ferocious derision of destiny which condemns man to deception." [Answer]
How many Oakley Hall books have you read? What is it
about that novelist that you found interesting enough to name your band
after him?
I liked the cadences in his name a
lot. It seemed to suggest something regal, American, and mysterious,
simultaneously. I’ve read a handful of his novels and was attracted by
the realism and grit of his vision of the west. With Deadwood and
Cormac McCarthy, the idea that the west was brutal, is pretty much a
cultural given now—but he was a few decades ahead of the curve.
“Warlock” is killer. He may have been one of the first guys to de-mythify the frontier. He’s also a cool guy too.
We’ve struck up a correspondence. His wife even recently came to a show
of ours in San
Francisco.
Students found his courses on Indian philosophy inspirational.
According to colleagues, he not only believed in personal reincarnation
but knew exactly who he had been in his former life: a police officer
in south India.
photograph of a policeman in Karachi (then India) from the BBC.
Speaking of twinning, doppelgangers, and possible copyright
infringement, we note with interest a a film premiering at the Toronto
film festival, Margot at the Wedding (tag
line: One family. Infinite degrees of separation). It's about two
sisters, one of whom is getting married while the other goes about
planting "seeds of doubt about the union." Sounds not unlike the plot
of Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker.
From the cover copy:
Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant,
nerve-wracked, miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives
back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the
wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from
Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding.
And yet completely unlike it. But Margot at the Wedding certainly seems more like Dorothy Baker's book than it does like the other inspiration some are citing, Eric Rohmer's Pauline at the Beach.
Quatrain sent by Rilke to Marina Tsvetayeva with a copy of his Duino Elegies, May 3, 1926
“My whole disposition has been blown to pieces by Rilke’s letter and Marina’s poem ["The Poem of the End].... It’s as though my heart has ripped open my shirt. I’ve gone crazy, splinters are flying: something akin to me exists in the world, and what kin!”—Boris Pasternak
"The Poem of the End" appears in Paul Schmidt's translation in The Stray Dog Cabaret—a book which Professor Ciepela helped edit and to which she provides an Introduction.
Transcripts of the letters exchanged between Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, and Rilke, see Letters: Summer 1926, introduced by Susan Sontag.
Quatrain sent by Rilke to Marina Tsvetayeva with a copy of his Duino Elegies, May 3, 1926
???My whole disposition has been blown to pieces by Rilke???s letter and Marina???s poem ["The Poem of the End].... It???s as though my heart has ripped open my shirt. I???ve gone crazy, splinters are flying: something akin to me exists in the world, and what kin!??????Boris Pasternak
"The Poem of the End" appears in Paul Schmidt's translation in The Stray Dog Cabaret???a book which Professor Ciepela helped edit and to which she provides an Introduction.
Transcripts of the letters exchanged between Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, and Rilke, see Letters: Summer 1926, introduced by Susan Sontag.
This just in from Jane Mosse—who informs me that she is by no means a Guernseyperson, or even a Guern, but a foreigner from England—three photographs of Ebenezer Le Page's haunts. I hope Jane will excuse my quoting her below.
[The photographs] are all of Bordeaux harbour, known to Ebby as Birdo. There is one of Lihou island which is where Ebenezer and Jim spent the night. Lihou faces some dangerous tides and is cut off by the causeway so visitors do need to check the times before walking over!
Recently, a reader wrote in about an earlier post having to do with a reading from Arun Kolatkar's poem cycle, Jejuri. In the post, I mentioned in passing that we'd be publishing a novel that was considered by the likes of Rushdie and Auden to be one of the classics of Anglo-Indian lit, All About H. Hatterr by G.V. Desani. I would say that Hatterr is one of the books we've had the most requests to republish. And it's always a pleasure to be able to respond to such requests with a simple, "Done."
I could attempt a word or two about Desani's book, but so many writers more intimate with the work than I am have done it so much better.
We can start with the aforementioned Rushdie, whose name often comes up in discussing the book. This is from Rushdie's preface to Mirrorwork, an anthology of Indian writing, published in 1997.
The writer I have placed alongside Narayan, G.V. Desani, has fallen so far from favour that the extraordinary All About H. Hatterr
is presently out of print everywhere, even in India. Milan Kundera once
said that all modern literature descends from either Richardson's Clarissa or Sterne's Tristram Shandy,
and if Narayan is India's Richardson then Desani is his Shandean other.
Hatterr's dazzling, puzzling, leaping prose is the first genuine effort
to go beyond the Englishness of the English language. His central
figure, 'fifty-fity of the species,' the half-breed as unabashed
anti-hero, leaps and capers behind many of the texts in this book. Hard
to imagine I. Allan Sealy's Trotter-Nama without Desani. My own writing, too, learned a trick or two from him.
The quote is found on Amardeep Singh's blog. I had the pleasure of hearing Professor Singh speak—along with the inspiring Rita Felski—on the topic: " Literary Criticism in the
Public Sphere" at last year's MLA conference. He also has an extensive post about Hatterr here.
Singh points us to the "In Memorium" statement by the faculty of the University of Teas at Austin.
Desani.org is a website devoted to the author. The "Talking Points" section of the site is fun.
Today is Bastille Day, and though it's a poor tribute, I thought I'd point you to a nice little brochure we've drawn up highlighting the rather large selection of books having to do with France. The place of pride goes to our sister imprint, The Little Bookroom, which has recently published (for the first time in English) the guide to dining in Paris, Le Pudlo Paris.
The NYRB Classics series is no slouch in the French department either. Take a look.
I've been rereading Harry Potter (again, again, and again) in preparation for the impending release of Book 7. Lately when I read, I've been noticing thematic connections across books. Here's one that has me thinking about truth.
From Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (J.K. Rowling) “The truth.” Dumbledore sighed. “It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.”
From The Book Thief (Markus Zusak) Therein lay the problem. Life had altered in the wildest possible way, but it was imperative that they act as if nothing at all had happened. Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.
0 Comments on Connections as of 6/18/2007 5:42:00 PM
If the Oak is out before the Ash, T'will be a summer of wet and splash; But if the Ash is out before the Oak, T'will be a summer of fire and smoke.
When the Hawthorne bloom too early shows, We shall have still many snows.
When the Oak puts on his goslings gray, 'Tis time to sow barley, night or day.
When Elm leaves are big as a shilling, Plant kidney beans if you are willing; When Elm leaves are as big as a penny, You must plant kidney beans if you wish to have any.
Today is National Arbor Day. And in honor of this unfashionable holiday (now completely usurped by Earth Day), we bring you a photograph of the setting garden designer Russell Page developed for the National Arboretum in Washington DC. Page incorporated twenty-two sandstone Corinthian columns—which were intended to support the East Portico of the capitol building, but ended up sunk in the Anacostia River—into the central garden of the arboretum as one of his very last commissions. Ground was broke for the project in 1985 but the project was not completed until 1990, five years after Page's death. The name Page gave it, the "Temple of Flora," perhaps deemed to fanciful for something repurposed from our national headquarters, seems not to be used these days.
Since Page's memoir and guide, The Education of a Gardener was published well before this project was conceived, we don't have any direct words from Page about it. But in 2001, Maureen Dowd offered her own appreciation in The New York Times:
THE NATIONAL CAPITOL COLUMNS
The 22 sandstone columns rise
out of the meadow toward the open sky mysteriously and gracefully. It's
almost like looking at a ruin of the Capitol, from some time in the
distant future.
These 25-ton Corinthian columns, which were
part of the east front of the Capitol from Andrew Jackson's inaugural
to Ike's, were removed when a new facade was put on the building just
before J.F.K.'s inaugural. They suffered decades of abuse before they
found a home at the National Arboretum, Washington's sprawling secret
garden, just northeast of the Capitol.
In 1926, when the columns were installed,
congressmen helped to pull the carriage toting them up Capitol Hill.
But in 1958, they were dumped for larger ones made of marble. The
dismantled columns languished for 15 years before being rolled onto the
banks of the Anacostia and left to sink in the mud.
Ethel
Garrett, an original Kennedy Center trustee, campaigned for more than
20 years to have the columns recovered and mounted at the arboretum and
raised $1 million from private donors. She died before it happened. But
she created a Washington wonder: a new monument that looks more
classically ancient than any of them.
After reading this post, Rita emailed me and informed me/reminded me of a few more coincidences that I'd like to write about. I love coincidences, like this one, and also love hearing about how people know each other, especially if the connection is a tenuous one, which is one of the tiny reasons why I love my group of friends I call the Randoms.
So, here are the Rita stories. First of all, we first met because of coincidences. I was a speaker at the LA SCBWI conference last year, and after my talk people lined up to talk to me (I felt very popular). When I got to this one woman, she looked embarrassed and said something about how she didn't really have a question, but she wanted to say that she thought we had two people in common. The first was a friend of hers named Calvin who was doing consulting at my company--yes! I knew him! (I remembered sitting in meetings and watching him taking notes in between nodding off.) And the second was that she was married to Damon, who I was friends with in college. I think he lived on the same dorm floor freshman year as one of my high school friends, and coincidentally one of HIS high school friends lived one floor below me in MY dorm. And that high school friend turned out to be one of Rita's best friends (Rita and Damon also went to high school together). It's all connected, right?
So Rita and I saw each other a bunch at the conference, kept in touch, read each other's blogs. My post on things I want to learn/try spurred her to email me about the Fiesta Bowl parade--she had marched in it, too--senior year of high school, as the clarinet section leader, front and center, setting the pace for the whole band. And you know what? ME, TOO! ME, TOO! Senior year of high school I was also the clarinet section leader, and also marched front and center, setting the pace for my marching band.
But that's not all:
About five or so years ago I was home for Thanksgiving, playing pool with my brothers in the basement, and the TV was on (but we weren't really watching,) and it was tuned to the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I actually think it may have been a repeat of an old show, because I don't think it was that late, but I'm not sure. Anyway, he was doing a skit about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with one other person, and there was some generic parade footage playing behind them. I kinda glanced at it and after seeing a banner I realized that the parade footage they were using was the Fiesta Bowl parade.
"Hey, that's the Fiesta Bowl parade!" I said to my brothers. We started to watch. "Wait...omigod, that's Diamond Bar!" (our high school)
Sure enough, it was the purple-and-gold Diamond Bar High School marching band--my band, and I slowly realized that it was my band during the time that I was in it, during my senior year, and wait...
"Hey! There's me!!!"
They showed the front of the band a few times, and I got a glimpse of myself marching along in my purple-and-gold uniform and playing the clarinet (not a pretty sight, I should say). Now, I hardly ever watch the Tonight Show, first of all, and that it would be that exact parade footage, from that exact time that we marched by...now that's a coincidence.
*************
And now more coincidence and connection stories from my weekend. This turned into an account of almost everything I did this past weekend, so please stop reading now if you don't want to be bored:
On Friday night I went to happy hour (well, a happy hour that turned into a 10-hour, 4-bar, 2-food establishment night), and Tracy's friend who was visiting from out of town came out, and he brought a friend who bore an uncanny resemblance to Hugh Grant. The next morning Rose and I were talking about the resemblance, and not ten minutes or so later I got a text from her. She was walking in Central Park and saw the REAL Hugh Grant walk by! I kid you not.
And more about that happy hour, it started as a work thing, but as I often do, I extended the invitation out to others. Now, usually when I do this, maybe one or two people end up coming out, but this time, maybe it was because it was a Friday right after the holiday, I had a ton of friends from different walks of life come out. Rose and her friends, my skydiving buddy Craig and his girlfriend, some of the Randoms, and of course my coworkers. And people kept asking how everyone else knew each other, and it was fun remembering. (One example: Eleanor's coworker Annabelle was roommates with Charlie, who interned with James, who went to school with Miguel, whose brother Jorge dated Jen, who went to college with Eveline, who I worked with.) We took over the Salt Bar for a good 4 hours. And if you've never been there, you must go just to try their bacon-wrapped-dates which are so good that we have dreams about them. Oh, and in honor of making the year 2007 two-thousand-and-risk, I tried a drink called the Bullshot that had beef bouillon and horse radish in it, and I liked it, dammit!
Saturday day was spent at brunch with my cousins Nate and Ingrid, and then a nice long walk in the park on a 70-degree day in January. Now, you'd think that connection is easy--cousins, right? But Ingrid is actually my step-cousin, as Ingrid's dad married my aunt about 4 years ago. And I guess Nate is my step-cousin-in-law. Right? So, what am I to their 2-month old baby Owen? His second-step-cousin?
Saturday night at Pete's housewarming party in Brooklyn was more of the same in terms of how people knew each other: Pete's originally a friend of a friend of a friend. There were other friends-of-friends there. And friend of a friend of a friend's coworkers. And friend of a friend of a friend's coworker's friend's friend. But hey, now we can all just say we're all just friends.
And on Sunday night, as I was heading out to watch Pan's Labyrinth (amazing movie), I got a call from a friend with a random question, and it turned out we were both heading to the same Times Square theater to watch movies (they were seeing Children of Men which I just saw last week), so we got to say hello in person outside of the theater. Another coincidence.
And I truly did not set out to tell you everything I did this weekend, but, well, there you go. A weekend in the life of me.
So that's the story of my Tonight Show appearance. And stories of coincidences and connections. I have more up my sleeve that I'll save for another day, but I'd love to hear your stories, too.
I love stories about coincidences! Yours are awesome! (And I think Rita is great - I met her at the same conference!)
Okay, but I do have to swoon - you saw Hugh Grant! *envy* ;)
alvina said, on 1/9/2007 6:07:00 PM
Ah, I wish. No, my roommate Rose saw the real Hugh Grant, I only met the copy. But according to Rose, the copy looked better than the real thing.
Rita said, on 1/10/2007 9:11:00 AM
Oh my goodness, you guys. My ears are burning.
But, that aside, GREAT POST! Seriously, great post. I love the chatty tone.
And, back to the ears burning: Damon loves it when I tell band stories. He loves to roll his eyes.
So this was a great coincidence for me. I got to go, "YAHHH! ALVINA MARCHED IN THE FIESTA BOWL PARADE, TOO!! SHE WAS CLARINET SECTION LEADER, TOO!! YOU LOVE IT!!"
But what I wanted to say about Leno is:
How great is it you appeared in stock footage? That's not just representing your own band. You've now become the face of high school marching bands everywhere.
Here's a coincidence story. Mom is at some meeting, and an acquaintance (some lady) comes up to ask her if Dad still works at "X company." And Mom replies yes, so the acquaintance asks, "Oh, does he happen to know a Ben? Apparently he is my friend's daughter's new boyfriend and he works there too, so I'm curious if your husband happens to know him."
So coincidentally it happened that the one person that the lady thought to ask, not only does Mom of course know them personally, and not only does her husband also know who I am, but she just asked the Mother of the person in question, about their own son, trying to find out if her husband, our dad, would know ME!
alvina said, on 1/11/2007 1:42:00 PM
haha--that was confusing, but funny.
And Calvin, see you at the next Change Governance Meeting for Pub Track. Even the title of the meeting makes me nod off.
Jenny Han said, on 1/15/2007 3:26:00 PM
Um, I think I need to be introduced to the Hugh Grant lookalike! Is he young, British, and single? Bring it.
Agyw said, on 1/17/2007 2:22:00 PM
I love this stuff too, Alvina! I seem to be one of those bridesmaids kind of thing and there are so many of them, I may just bore you to tears (means I probably should put it on my neglected blog, eh?) but here's a few, I've been assaulted by a serial killer, have a strange in-out dance with the King of Horror.
I had two longterm boyfriends, one's great-great-great was the founder of Akron Ohio and nearly ruined by by his friendship with John Brown and the other's grandfather was President of Arizona's Mormon temple, stepfather a renegade government protester. The first I loved because he was quirky and interesting-- a machinist by trade and a supreme expert on Watches, Clocks and other antiques. I learned so much with him. The second a wonderful sculptor, I ended up working at foundries, living on the side of a mountain for four and a half months while being a docent for Sedona Arts Center, and finding myself in the desert.
I went to school with Corey Allen (of Chuck Mangione/jazz music fame), Greg Stump(originator of the atheletic hotdog snow movies), a survivor of the Pinochet coup (she was an AFS student at the time of Allende's fall), to name a few. And I'm just a podunk from Maine, though a few of my forbears have done noteworthy-- good and bad-- things. Will and Ariel Durant and Cecil Maxam, which explains my cantankerous soul.
Even my husband story is one of those coincidencental thangs. At one point we lived three doors away from each other for nearly a year and never met. I had been friends with his sister, though not close (he was much younger then, lol), and he dated a friend of mine the night before she left Portland to move to Arizona as my roommate. We didn't meet until both of us were humbled a bit by life and a lot more understanding of human foibles. It's been a truly interesting challenge and a bit of a crucible.
I have an OT question, Alvina, do you take unsolicited queries? You can answer me privately if you'd like (or not at all, if I'm being too bold, in which case, forgive me). My email is [email protected]. I understand if you don't or won't.
alvina said, on 1/17/2007 11:54:00 PM
Thanks for the stories!
Jenny, I wish I could introduce you to the Hugh Grant lookalike, but I don't have his contact info and he didn't express any interest to meet again. He was a friend of a friend of a friend.
Agy, I love your story about your husband! And I'm sorry, but I don't take queries via this blog. I'm buried right now at work, and still have mss from over six months ago, which I know is unacceptable, so I need to get caught up before I request new stuff.
Agyw said, on 1/18/2007 12:23:00 AM
no problem, Alvina, just wanted to know if I could snail mail you a query. Understand perfectly (Verla and a few others have shared pictures of the slush piles, so you get little envy from me, unless some of it involves pizza and massive amounts of Coca Cola). The older I get the more I believe there are no coincedences (it's late, did I spell that correctly? Geh). Thank you for answering, though! P.S. you new line up from the BRG looks wonderful! Can't wait to see them in print!
Katia said, on 1/27/2007 12:38:00 AM
Hello Alvina, I come in a little late, BUT I just have to share my coincidence story, because I do think you'll like it. It happened at the SCBWI Los Angeles conference, last August. I did exchange a few words with you, at the very end, and I'm positive you do not remember me, but that's not what this is about. On the second evening of peer critique sessions, I went down to the room a little late and approached one of the two tables shown to me. I sat there, took out the manuscript I wanted to read, and tried to blend in as quickly as I could. At some stage, I noticed the woman sitting next to me giving me strange looks. She had been reading the name and address on top of the manuscript. Now, I live in Hyderabad, South India. So, she gives me a suspicious look, and says: You live in Hyderabad? Yes, I answer. That's my hometown, she says. REALLY ? Now, what were the odds of my sitting next to a person who grew up in Hyderabad, India, that very evening, during a 4-day conference that attracted some 600 people ??? Her mother still lives in Hyderabad, and my new friend came to visit her for Christmas and we met, I met her mom and her brother, and we went to see a 500 year old baobad tree outside a 14th Century fort at sunrise, spending four hours climbing old fortification walls AND the baobab tree, and taking fantastic early morning pictures. Isn't that a wonderful story? AND she writes for children. I simply still haven't gotten over that one :-) Katia
I love stories about coincidences! Yours are awesome! (And I think Rita is great - I met her at the same conference!)
Okay, but I do have to swoon - you saw Hugh Grant! *envy* ;)
Ah, I wish. No, my roommate Rose saw the real Hugh Grant, I only met the copy. But according to Rose, the copy looked better than the real thing.
Oh my goodness, you guys. My ears are burning.
But, that aside, GREAT POST! Seriously, great post. I love the chatty tone.
And, back to the ears burning:
Damon loves it when I tell band stories. He loves to roll his eyes.
So this was a great coincidence for me. I got to go, "YAHHH! ALVINA MARCHED IN THE FIESTA BOWL PARADE, TOO!! SHE WAS CLARINET SECTION LEADER, TOO!! YOU LOVE IT!!"
But what I wanted to say about Leno is:
How great is it you appeared in stock footage? That's not just representing your own band. You've now become the face of high school marching bands everywhere.
Everyone loves that.
r
nodding off?! i resemble that remark
Here's a coincidence story. Mom is at some meeting, and an acquaintance (some lady) comes up to ask her if Dad still works at "X company." And Mom replies yes, so the acquaintance asks, "Oh, does he happen to know a Ben? Apparently he is my friend's daughter's new boyfriend and he works there too, so I'm curious if your husband happens to know him."
So coincidentally it happened that the one person that the lady thought to ask, not only does Mom of course know them personally, and not only does her husband also know who I am, but she just asked the Mother of the person in question, about their own son, trying to find out if her husband, our dad, would know ME!
haha--that was confusing, but funny.
And Calvin, see you at the next Change Governance Meeting for Pub Track. Even the title of the meeting makes me nod off.
Um, I think I need to be introduced to the Hugh Grant lookalike! Is he young, British, and single? Bring it.
I love this stuff too, Alvina! I seem to be one of those bridesmaids kind of thing and there are so many of them, I may just bore you to tears (means I probably should put it on my neglected blog, eh?) but here's a few, I've been assaulted by a serial killer, have a strange in-out dance with the King of Horror.
I had two longterm boyfriends, one's great-great-great was the founder of Akron Ohio and nearly ruined by by his friendship with John Brown and the other's grandfather was President of Arizona's Mormon temple, stepfather a renegade government protester. The first I loved because he was quirky and interesting-- a machinist by trade and a supreme expert on Watches, Clocks and other antiques. I learned so much with him. The second a wonderful sculptor, I ended up working at foundries, living on the side of a mountain for four and a half months while being a docent for Sedona Arts Center, and finding myself in the desert.
I went to school with Corey Allen (of Chuck Mangione/jazz music fame), Greg Stump(originator of the atheletic hotdog snow movies), a survivor of the Pinochet coup (she was an AFS student at the time of Allende's fall), to name a few. And I'm just a podunk from Maine, though a few of my forbears have done noteworthy-- good and bad-- things. Will and Ariel Durant and Cecil Maxam, which explains my cantankerous soul.
Even my husband story is one of those coincidencental thangs. At one point we lived three doors away from each other for nearly a year and never met. I had been friends with his sister, though not close (he was much younger then, lol), and he dated a friend of mine the night before she left Portland to move to Arizona as my roommate. We didn't meet until both of us were humbled a bit by life and a lot more understanding of human foibles. It's been a truly interesting challenge and a bit of a crucible.
I have an OT question, Alvina, do you take unsolicited queries? You can answer me privately if you'd like (or not at all, if I'm being too bold, in which case, forgive me). My email is [email protected]. I understand if you don't or won't.
Thanks for the stories!
Jenny, I wish I could introduce you to the Hugh Grant lookalike, but I don't have his contact info and he didn't express any interest to meet again. He was a friend of a friend of a friend.
Agy, I love your story about your husband! And I'm sorry, but I don't take queries via this blog. I'm buried right now at work, and still have mss from over six months ago, which I know is unacceptable, so I need to get caught up before I request new stuff.
no problem, Alvina, just wanted to know if I could snail mail you a query. Understand perfectly (Verla and a few others have shared pictures of the slush piles, so you get little envy from me, unless some of it involves pizza and massive amounts of Coca Cola). The older I get the more I believe there are no coincedences (it's late, did I spell that correctly? Geh).
Thank you for answering, though! P.S. you new line up from the BRG looks wonderful! Can't wait to see them in print!
Hello Alvina,
I come in a little late, BUT I just have to share my coincidence story, because I do think you'll like it. It happened at the SCBWI Los Angeles conference, last August. I did exchange a few words with you, at the very end, and I'm positive you do not remember me, but that's not what this is about. On the second evening of peer critique sessions, I went down to the room a little late and approached one of the two tables shown to me. I sat there, took out the manuscript I wanted to read, and tried to blend in as quickly as I could. At some stage, I noticed the woman sitting next to me giving me strange looks. She had been reading the name and address on top of the manuscript. Now, I live in Hyderabad, South India. So, she gives me a suspicious look, and says: You live in Hyderabad? Yes, I answer. That's my hometown, she says. REALLY ? Now, what were the odds of my sitting next to a person who grew up in Hyderabad, India, that very evening, during a 4-day conference that attracted some 600 people ??? Her mother still lives in Hyderabad, and my new friend came to visit her for Christmas and we met, I met her mom and her brother, and we went to see a 500 year old baobad tree outside a 14th Century fort at sunrise, spending four hours climbing old fortification walls AND the baobab tree, and taking fantastic early morning pictures. Isn't that a wonderful story? AND she writes for children. I simply still haven't gotten over that one :-)
Katia