The Buzz...About Books

Putting on the Fitz: Books about F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald ruled the Jazz Age. Rich, talented, beautiful, and outrageous - Scott and Zelda partied like it was 1925.  Both continue to fascinate the public and inspire novelists, filmmakers and artists. Director Baz Luhrmann's upcoming The Great Gatsby and the recently published Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Fowler will renew interest in this beautiful but damned couple.

Fun fact: video game designer Shigeru Miyamo named his pixel princess "Zelda" after Zelda Fitzgerald.

Scott, one of the greatest modern writers, wrote The Great Gatsby.  Zelda was a glamorous southern belle who smoked, drank, played with boys - and got away with it. 

Together they ruled as the celebrity couple of the 1920s, the king and queen of the Lost Generation with Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Josephine Baker, Jon Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and Isadora Duncan.

But it wasn't all golden. Zelda was Scott's muse - but she was also a rival and struggled with her artistic ambitions. Hemingway viewed her as Scott's Yoko Ono; Zelda thought Hemingway was a jerk. Alcoholism and mental illness were the dark passengers that dogged their so-called charmed life. Scott died at 44 from a heart attack; Zelda died in a fire at a mental institution.

 Rare glimpes of the Fitzgeralds:

Fictionalized works with the Fitzgeralds:

  The Beautiful and the Damned

Alissa York: Online Chat--Tonight!

Toronto Public Library's Writer in Residence, Alissa York will be our guest on Thursday March 28 for a live chat.

Join us as we discuss writing and literature with the author of acclaimed novels Mercy, Effigy and Fauna.

Never participated in a live chat? It's easy. You can join from any computer with Internet access. Simply go to our chat page at 7:30 on March 28 and start typing--ask questions, make comments or just read the discussion.

Our live chats are a great way to interact with writers and with other readers. They're lively and lots of fun. 

Please join us on Book Buzz:

Alissa York: Live Chat
Thursday March 28, 7:30-8:30 PM

Related:
Writer in Residence--Alissa York

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.

Alissa York: Live Chat on Book Buzz

Toronto Public Library's Writer in Residence, Alissa York will be our guest on Thursday March 28 for a live chat.

Join us as we discuss writing and literature with the author of acclaimed novels Mercy, Effigy and Fauna.

Never participated in a live chat? It's easy. You can join from any computer with Internet access. Simply go to our chat page at 7:30 on March 28 and start typing--ask questions, make comments or just read the discussion.

Our live chats are a great way to interact with writers and with other readers. They're lively and lots of fun. 

Please join us on Book Buzz:

Alissa York: Live Chat
Thursday March 28, 7:30-8:30 PM

Related:
Writer in Residence--Alissa York

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

Feeling Misérables?

Victor Hugo has a lot to answer for. His 1862 novel, Les Misérables, has been adapted for stage, screen, and radio, inspired music and art, and infiltrated popular culture with Susan Boyle, Sideshow Bob, Glee, and countless internet memes. Tom Hooper's recently-released film based on Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg's musical has readers storming the barricades to check out this 19th century classic.  

Les Misérables isn't just a good read - it's a magnificent read.

Readers can be intimidated by the historical breadth of Hugo's novel. Prisoner 2-4-6-0-1 doesn't appear immediately - you must be patient. This is a book for a cold, dark night, to be read by candlelight with a glass of Bordeaux.  Hugo is a poet - his masterpiece on social injustice, love, and redemption is as beautiful as it is brutal. 

Would the lovely Anne Hathaway be as ready for her close-up if she appeared the way Hugo dreamed the tragic Fantine  - with her two front teeth knocked out? 

Reserve a copy of Les Misérables in French or English. The eBook is available in English and on audiobook in French in five volumes: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. 

Watch Les Misérables in Concert: the 25th Anniversary Live on DVD. Listen to the original 1985 London cast on CD with Colm Wilkinson, Patti LuPone and Roger Allam.

On the right: the elegant "Javert in 12 Panels by the artist, ~hun-tun.

Further Reading:

The Reinvention of Love by Helen Humphreys. Toronto's award-winning novelist imagines Victor Hugo and his wife, Adèle, in a love triangle.

Cosette: a Sequel by Laura Kalpakian.  At least there are no zombies.

The Temptation of the Impossible: Victor Hugo and Les Misérables by Mario Vargas Llosa. Llosa, the 2010 Nobel Prize winner for literature, offers a passionate reading of Hugo's novel.

Victor Hugo: A Biography by Graham Robb

Related Posts: Red Carpet Reads

   

Hugo was no stranger to misery: his son Léopold died in infancy, his daughter Léopoldine drowned, and his youngest daughter, Adèle suffered from mental illness (the basis for François Truffaut's film, L'histoire d'Adèle H which is, sadly, unavailable at present).    

Victor Hugo circa 1853 photographed by his son, Charles Hugo

 Internet cats and Les Misérables?  Mais bien sûr.  Look down, look down . . .

 
The legendary Grumpy Cat.

Writing the Revolution by Michele Landsberg

 Why should Michele Landsberg's Writing the Revolution win the Toronto Book Award on October 11th? Let me tell you why:

To begin with, Writing the Revolution is a lively and unpretentious read. Composed mostly of articles selected from Landsberg's long career as a columnist for The Globe & Mail and The Toronto Star, Writing the Revolution is edited to follow the evolution of the feminist movement in North America in a neat and vivid arch.

You don't have to have stood as witness to the events Landsberg so courageously wrote about (i.e. you don't have to be middle aged) to get excited about this book, because Writing the Revolution does a good job of taking you there, exemplifying through Landsberg's own trajectory the world that was Canada in the 1950's through the 1980's.

It wasn't all that good, as it turns out. Much needed to change. The activist work of women like Florence Bird (first Chair of The Royal Commission on the Status of Women), Doris Anderson (ground-breaking Editor of Chatelaine magazine), Kay Macpherson (first woman elected to the House of Commons), Jane Doe (tireless activist for victims of rape), June Callwood, and so many more, did, in fact, constitute a revolution, a transformation of Canadian society.

Writing the Revolution is meaningful and important, not just because Michele Landsberg is a good writer willing to fight for space in the male-controlled media of the time, but because she herself was an active agent of the change she was chronicling.

Painterly in its writing, these selections are accompanied with a plethora of photographs (don't miss Michele Landsberg and Stephen Lewis' wedding photograph on page 69) which bring to life the excitement of an era that shaped who we are today.

Meet Farzana Doctor at North York Central Library

Toronto Public Library is pleased to welcome acclaimed author Farzana Doctor as our Writer in Residence in October-November 2012.

Her novels include Stealing Nasreen and Six Metres of Pavement. Six Metres of Pavement was the winner of this year's Lambda award for Lesbian General Fiction and is a current finalist for the Toronto Book Awards. The Toronto Book Awards will be announced next week on October 11.

Meet the author this Saturday, October 6, 2 pm. at North York Central Library in the Auditorium.

 Read a review of Six Metres of Pavement.

Dispatches from the War on the Internet

When Wikipedia darkened it's site last week to protest the passing of laws that would have placed new restrictions on our use of the internet to share books, music and video, I was very glad to have just finished reading two excellent collections of essays by Cory Doctorow on the issues involved.

Cory Doctorow by Derryl Murphy

Doctorow was born in Toronto and has a reputation as an author of fine science-fiction and as a co-editor of the wildly popular blog Boing Boing. He has also been writing marvelously entertaining articles on the internet using down-to-earth, easy to understand language and examples from everyday life.

In his first collection -- Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future he writes in detail about the negative effects of Digital Rights Management (DRM) and other forms of control on the internet.

Doctorow's argument boils down to his belief that whatever we lose in the free exchange of information on the internet, we will gain in innovations which will enrich our culture in ways that cannot yet be predicted. Call him an optimist.

Doctorow has given away free downloads of all his novels from the beginning of his career. He has found that by making these copies free and encouraging his fans to share them online he has expanded the market for the printed editions of his books.

In his latest collection -- Context: Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century he writes about how these issues affect him as a creative writer and as a new parent.

He explains intellectual property, the "information economy", copyright enforcement and digital licensing in clearly understandable ways.

His warnings about the vulnerability of our passwords and our personal data online are frightening and sobering.

He explains why streaming will never replace the downloading of music online.

He also talks about how he manages the hundreds of non-spam emails he gets every day, and why he will never buy an iPad.

Together these books cover ten years of exciting, insightful coverage of these increasingly important issues in a highly readable way.

 

Pemberley Revisited

Sequels to Jane Austen's novels are often greeted by fans of Austen's works with a variety of reactions, which can range anywhere from curiousity and enthusiasm through distain and resentment.  

P.D. James (or Baroness James of Holland Park, to use her official title) is one of a few well-known authors to publish a sequel of one of Jane Austen's books.  P.D. James is one of Britain's best known detective fiction authors.  She has published 19 novels, most of which feature policeman Adam Dalgliesh. 

In Death Comes to Pemberley, she continues the story of  Pride and Prejudice, revealing the six years between the end of that book and the beginning of this story in the Prologue.   I think Austen fans will particulary enjoy this part of the book, as it is quite "Austen-esque".

The story itself begins on the eve of Lady Anne's Ball, with Jane and Bingley, Colonel Fitzwilliam, Georgiana and the Bingleys' friend Henry Alveston all visiting Pemberley.  Just as they are about to retire for the night, a chaise arrives driven quite unexpectedly.   As the galloping horses come to a stop, a hysterical Lydia Wickham throws herself out of the carriage and screams that her husband Wickham has been murdered in the Pemberley woods.   Darcy, Colonel Fitzwilliam and Alveston soon set off, only to discover  Wickham over the body of Captain Denny crying "He's dead! Oh God, Denny's dead! He was my friend, my only friend, and I've killed him! I've killed him! It's my fault".  Has Wickham really killed Denny?

Publishing a sequel to such a enduring classic is not done lightly, paricularly by a well-respected author.  P.D. James discusses her motivation for writing this story in a interview with the Telegraph and in this video interview, which took place in her home in October 2011.

 

 

Quite a number of reviews of this book have been written, including in the New York Times and Globe and Mail.  The Toronto Public Library also has it available in audiobook format.

 

Related Posts:

• Spinning Austen or Jane has the last laugh
• Jane Austen Ruined My Life
• Mashed up Fiction and the "ick" factor