The Buzz...About Books

Treating Ideas Like Cats

“Ray Bradbury, cat lover #RIP” was the tweet sent out last June 6 by Buzzfeed after Bradbury’s death at age 92. Not “Ray Bradbury, author extraordinaire #RIP,” or “Ray Bradbury, sci fi genius #RIP,” or even “Ray Bradbury, Author of Fahrenheit 451 #RIP” but “Ray Bradbury, cat lover #RIP.” Elsewhere, blogger Bobby Pfeiffer wrote an obit entitled “R.I.P. Ray Bradbury (and another proof that cats are a writer's best friend)”.  Bradbury, author of this year’s One Book selection Fahrenheit 451, was clearly well known for mentioning his cats fondly in numerous contexts. He had even suggested that he treated his creative ideas (and by extension, his writing) in the same manner as his cats.

Another commenter on an obituary blog post about Bradbury also noted his ongoing interest in cats. “My first encounter with Ray Bradbury was at a book signing for Quicker Than the Eye in 1996,” writes Dale Allen. “When it came my turn to get an autographed copy of the book, I asked him as he shook my hand, ‘What’s your cat’s name?’ referring to his publicity photo on the back of the book. Bradbury said, ‘What?’ The book clerk assisting him repeated my question. ‘Tigger!’ he exclaimed … ‘I told my publishers not to change it until they brought him back to life.’”

Bradbury and his wife Marguerite (Maggie) Bradbury (nee McClure) shared their home with several cats over the years. Like his cats, his wife of 56 years helped enable his writing as, for many years, Maggie was the family breadwinner, allowing Ray to stay home and write. At one point in the 1950s, the Bradbury family home was home to 22 felines, although more recent years saw more manageable numbers, dwindling to only two, Win-Win and Ditzy, at the time of Marguerite’s death in 2003.

In a splendid simile, Bradbury was quoted as treating his writing in the same manner as his cats:

“As soon as things get difficult, I walk away. That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you. If you try to approach a cat and pick it up, hell, it won’t let you do it. You’ve got to say, ‘Well, to hell with you.’ And the cat says, ‘Wait a minute. He’s not behaving the way most humans do.’ Then the cat follows you out of curiosity: ‘Well, what’s wrong with you that you don’t love me?” (Zen in the Art of Writing).

“Any owner of cats will know of what I speak. Cats come at dawn to sit on your bed. They may not nip your nose or inhale your breath or make a sound. They simply sit there and stare at you until you open one eyelid and spy them there about to drop dead for need of feeding. So it is with ideas. They come silently in the hour of trying to wake up and remember my name. The notions and fancies sit on the edge of my wits, whisper in my ears and then, if I don't rouse, give more than cats give: a good knock in the head, which gets me out and down to my typewriter before the ideas flee or die or both. In any event, I make the ideas come to me. I do not go to them. I provoke their patience by pretending disregard. This infuriates the latent creature until it is almost raving to be born and once born, nourished" (Columbia World of Quotations).

And also from Zen in the Art of Writing:

“And metaphors like cats behind your smile,
Each one wound up to purr,
each one a pride,
Each one a fine gold beast you've hid inside (...)”

Cats are mentioned throughout Bradbury’s writing, including in the title of one of his books of short stories, The Cat’s Pajamas. Cats serve both as minor subjects of discussion and more often are used in descriptive similes and metaphors. Says one short story character, “There’s no future without my cat,” a concept probably familiar to Bradbury.  Bradbury also wrote a book of poetry called With Cat for Comforter, even the title giving the reader some sense of the warmth and affection he felt for these animals.

In addition to treating his ideas like cats, Bradbury stated that “I have my favorite cat, who is my paperweight, on my desk while I am writing”.  Anyone who has tried to read a newspaper with a cat in the room certainly knows that feeling!

Bradbury is certainly not the only author who shares his life with cats. Blogger Bobby Pfeiffer, who alleges that cats are a writer’s best friend, notes that: “Writers are great people.  They might be rambling lunatics or lazy drunkards or unpleasant anti-socials or even ordinary dullards, but they are still great.  You know why?  Because a) they write and b) they love cats. No man or a woman who loves language and stories, and keeps a furry friend around can be a bad person.” Pfeiffer has collected a fascinating selection of photos of authors as illustrious as Stephen King, Allen Ginsberg, Ernest Hemingway, Joyce Carol Oates, William Faulkner, William Burroughs, Truman Capote, Sylvia Plath, Samuel Beckett and Herman Hesse, in addition to Bradbury, all in the company of their cats.

Another article on writing and cats adds TS Eliot, Mark Twain, William Butler Yeats, Patricia Highsmith, Charles Dickens and Neil Gaiman to the list of ailurophile authors.  Of course, we are not suggesting that it is absolutely necessary to share your home with a cat or two in order to produce prize-winning prose, but it sure sounds like it helps. Just in case, if you are an aspiring author, visit your local animal shelter or Toronto Cat Rescue to help enable your next prize-winning novel. Tell them Ray sent you.

Remembering Chinua Achebe 1930 - 2013

  

Chinua Achebe, the father of modern African literature, has died at the age of 82 in Boston.  Born in Nigeria in 1930, Achebe's first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958) took the world by storm and set the stage for Africa to reclaim the literary voice usurped by her colonizers.  Novelist, critic, political activist, professor, and poet - the power and influence of Achebe's work and legacy is staggering.

Read about it here: CBC, Globe, Toronto Star, Guardian,  BBC, Times Nigeria, The New York Times, Ottawa Citizen, Washington Post, and in the AllAfrica Times.

Read (or re-read) Achebe's works.  Here is a selection available at the Toronto Public Library:  

 

Things Fall Apart is also available on Audiobook.

Check out the Guardian's photo gallery.  Toronto's 680 News has posted selected quotes.

Read what the Guardian had to say when Achebe was awarded the International Man Booker Prize in 2007.

 Watch the 2008 PBS Interview: Achebe Discusses Africa 50 Years After Things Fall Apart:

 

 

Achebe, aged 26

Remembering David Rakoff, 1964-2012

Humourist David Rakoff was born in Montreal and moved to Toronto in 1967.  After graduating from Forest Hill Collegiate, he majored in East Asian Studies at Columbia University in New York, a city he called "the great love of my life".  He worked as a translator in Japan for a time, but returned to Canada after being diagnosed at 22 with Hodgkin's Disease.  He later said that he had "dabbled" in cancer.  Following treatment for the disease he returned to New York, where he worked in publishing before becoming a writer.  He eventually became an American citizen--a process he documented in Don't Get Too Comfortable.

Three collections of his essays were published.

	Audiobook	Audiobook

Fraud: Essays with Illustrations from the Author captured the Lambda Award for Humor in 2001. The award was also given to his second collection, Don't Get Too Comfortable.  In 2010 while he was completing Half Empty, he was diagnosed with cancer again and began treatment which he discusses in the book.  Half Empty was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour and won the Thurber Prize for American Humor in 2011.

Doubleday will publish his final book titled Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die; Cherish, Perish in 2013.

Rakoff died of cancer on August 9, 2012 at the age of 47.

In Memory of Gore Vidal, 1925-2012

Gore Vidal, the sometimes controversial, always fascinating writer and social critic died on July 31 at the age of 86. 

Vidal was born Eugene Louis Vidal at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. His father mistakenly gave him the name Louis instead of the intended middle name Luther. The error was corrected at Vidal's 1938 baptism when he also added his mother's maiden name "Gore".  In his teenage years he dropped Eugene and Luther and was thereafter known as Gore Vidal.

His first novel Williwaw, based on his own army experiences, was written when he was 20. Vidal's third novel The City and the Pillar shocked 1948 audiences with its frank depiction of a homosexual relationship. Now too controversial to make a living publishing under his own name, Vidal adopted the pseudonym Edgar Box and found financial success with a series of mystery novels.

His novels included The Judgment of Paris, The Smithsonian Institution and The Golden Age but he also wrote a number of non-fiction works often critical of the United States government.  He received the National Book Award for a collection of these pieces--United States: Essays 1952-1992.

Never married, Vidal enjoyed relationships with both men and women, including a brief engagement to actress Joanne Woodward. His relationship with partner Howard Austen lasted from 1950 when they first met until Austen's death in 2003.

Gore Vidal died of complications from pneumonia at his home in California.

Remembering Maeve Binchy, 1940-2012

Maeve Binchy was born in Dalkey, a Dublin suburb.  She was the eldest of four children. After graduating from the University College Dublin, she worked as a teacher and journalist before devoting her life to fiction writing.

Her debut novel, Light a Penny Candle was rejected five times before it was finally published in 1982.  Tara Road, a novel about an Irish and an American women trading houses to escape personal problems was selected by Oprah Winfrey for her book club.  It became an international bestseller.

She briefly retired from writing in 2000 following the publication of Scarlet Feather but relented after 800 letters of protest were sent to The Irish Times newspaper.  She went on to publish another five novels--Quentins, Nights of Rain and Stars, Whitethorn Woods, Heart and Soul and Minding Frankie.  One final book, A Week in Winter is scheduled for release in October 2012.

In recent years her mobility had become restricted due to painful arthritis and a heart condition. 

Maeve Binchy died on July 30 following a brief illness.

I'll Have What She's Having: Remembering Nora Ephron 1941-2012

Nora Ephron died last night in New York at the age of 71 from complications arising from leukemia. One of the great American humourists of the 20^th century, Ms. Ephron was an accomplished screenwriter, director, novelist, journalist , playwright, essayist, producer and blogger with a remarkable list of credits over many decades.  The quintessential New Yorker, Ephron's irreverence, wit, and generosity were oft cited within her large circle of writers, filmmakers, and journalists. 

Read the reaction to her passing in the New York Times, Toronto Star, National Post, Huffington Post,  Washington Post, Globe and Mail, Gaurdian, and the New Yorker.  Watch the news coverage on ABC.

She began her career as a journalist writing for the New York Post, Esquire, and New York Magazine. Her career as a screenwriter included When Harry Met Sally (who can forget the scene in Katz's delicatessen that ended with one of the best one-liners ever?) and Silkwood. She both wrote and directed Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and Julie and Julia. 

Ephron's essays in I Feel Bad About My Neck (also available on audiobook read by the author) and in I Remember Nothing are direct, personal, and funny. And speaking of personal, her scathing novel Heartburn was inspired by the breakup of her second marriage to Carl "Watergate" Bernstein (who left her for another woman while Ephron was pregnant with their second child).  Her early essays are available in Wallflower at the Orgy.

 

 

 Watch Ephron's 2010 interview with Author Magazine:

   

 

Ephron on the set (1992) Courtesy of the Washington Academy of Achievment

 

  

Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012

Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois on August 22, 1920.  As a child, he was a frequent patron of the Carnegie Library in Waukegan.  He was drawn to speculative fiction, particularly the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe.

Looking back at his childhood Bradbury said "Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years."

A lifelong fan of magic, Bradbury was 12 when he encountered Mr. Electrico, a carnival magician.  The magician touched Bradbury with an electrified wand and instructed the child to "live forever!"  The author later credited Mr. Electrico for inspiring him to write every day, a practice he continued until shortly before his death.

His novels include The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes and Farewell Summer.  I Sing the Body Electric, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales and The October Country are among the many short story collections available at Toronto Public Library.

Although I have a great affection for Fahrenheit 451, my all-time favourite Bradbury work is The Illustrated Man, a collection of 18 haunting short stories represented by tattoos on the title character's body.

One of the most influential writers of the 20th century, Ray Bradbuy died June 5, 2012 at the age of 91.

Etta James 1938-2012

I came into work today and was greeted with the sad news that Etta James has died at the age of 73.  I discovered her music when I was in high school and have remained a loyal fan ever since.

Her personal life was complicated.  She survived the music industry, drug addiction and a friendship with Keith Richards who remembers her fondly in his autobiography, Life.  She was born to a 14 year-old mother and an unknown father.  Her mother was often absent, leaving Etta with caregivers who discovered and exploited her singing talent.  When Etta was 14, promoter/songwriter Johnny Otis heard her sing and became her mentor.  Coincidentally Otis also died today at the age of 90.

If you would like to read more about Etta James, try her autobiography, Rage to Survive: the Etta James Story.  Toronto Public Library has a number of her CDs as well. 

 

 

 

Christopher Hitchens: 1949 - 2011

 
Christopher Hitchens, British author and essayist, died last night of complications related to cancer. A fierce intellectual and polemicist, Hitchens was no stranger to controversy. Indeed, his impressive body of work has both engaged and enraged his many readers over the years - and his passing has resulted in an outpouring of editorials reflecting on his life and work.  

Read obits from the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, the BBC, CNN, the Guardian, the National Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Daily Mail and Vanity Fair.

See Vanity's Fair's photo essay.  Read some of his memorable quotes here and here.

Watch Hitchen's inteview with Sally Quinn of the Washington Post in which he reflects upon his life's work. 

 

The Guardian reports on a forthcoming memoir, Mortality, based on his Vanity Fair columns.

Until then:

 

 

 

 

 

• God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
• Hitch-22: A Memoir
• Arguably: Essays 
• The Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism

 

Hitchens in 1968.

 

Jack Layton, 1950-2011

Jack Layton's recent death has touched many people in Toronto and throughout Canada. 

If you'd like to learn more about Layton, you might be interested in reading the books he's written. 

Homelessness: How to End the National Crisis
 
Layton was an outspoken advocate for the homeless.  In this book he combines research and anecdotal material from a wide range of sources--economists, politicians, the homeless themselves--in order to examine the roots of the crisis and move towards practical solutions.

Speaking Out Louder: Ideas that Work for Canadians
 
Following the 2006 federal election, Layton became concerned that Canadians were losing touch with long-held national values.  This book was intended to refocus Canadian attention on issues like poverty, health care and education.