Joan Didion Reads Honey Bear to Quintana Roo

In this charming photo from 1969, novelist/screenwriter/essayist/writing icon Joan Didion reads HONEY BEAR by Dixie Willson to three-year-old daughter Quintana Roo Dunne. Since Didion is a writer par excellence, we are assuming that she picked only the best books to read to her daughter — and it follows that Honey Bear is a classic.

Wow! Yes! None other than Tom Wolfe — author of one of my favorite novels THE BONFIRES OF THE VANITIES and many other fiction and nonfiction works — claims that Honey Bear by Dixie Willson was the piece of literature that inspired him to become a writer (no kidding!). Because Wolfe’s take on Willson’s book is so fascinating and informative, I’m including an excerpt from his musings below.

From “The Books that Made the Writers” (YALE ALUMNI MAGAZINE) by Tom Wolfe:

“…I was… galvanized…by a writer who never rated so much as a footnote to American literary history: Dixie Willson. Dixie Willson wrote, and Maginel Wright Barney illustrated, a book called Honey Bear in 1923. My mother used to read it to me at bedtime long before I knew one letter of the alphabet from another. Over and over she read it to me. I was small, but like many people my age I had already mastered the art of having things my way. I had memorized the entire poem in the passive sense that I could tell whenever Mother skipped a passage in the vain hope of getting the 110th or 232nd reading over with a little sooner. Oh, no-ho-ho…there was no fooling His Majesty the Baby. He wanted it all. He couldn’t get enough of it.

Honey Bear is a narrative poem about a baby kidnapped from a bassinet by a black bear. Maginel Wright Barney drew and painted in the japanais Vienna Secession style. To me, her pictures were pure magic. But Honey Bear’s main attraction was Dixie Willson’s rollicking and rolling rhythm: anapestic quadrameter with spondees at regular intervals. One has to read it out loud in order to be there:

Once upon a summer in the hills by the river
Was a deep green forest where the wild things grew.
There were caves as dark as midnight—there were tangled trees and thickets
And a thousand little places where the sky looked through.

The Willson beat made me think writing must be not only magical but fun…I resolved then and there, lying illiterate on a little pillow in a tiny bed, to be a writer. In homage to Dixie Willson, I’ve slipped a phrase or two from Honey Bear into every book I’ve written. I tucked the fourth line, above, into the opening chapter of The Right Stuff (page 4) from memory as I described how not-yet-an-Astronaut Pete Conrad’s and his Jean Simmons-lookalike wife Jane’s little white brick cottage near Jacksonville Naval Air Base was set in a thick green grove of pine trees with ‘a thousand little places where the sun peeks through.’ Peeks… looked… Ah, well, hey ho…”

Read more of of “The Books that Made the Writers” at YALE ALUMNI REVIEW.

Photo: Joan Didion Reads Honey Bear by Dixie Willson to daughter Quintana Roo Dunne, Los Angeles Times, 1969, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Note: Honey Bear by Dixie Willson is currently out of print, but copies are usually available on ebay (starting at around  $100)…

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, Read by Jacqueline Kennedy

As mentioned in several recent posts, May is “Get Caught Reading” Month — and we’ve been having fun featuring photos of well known people reading books, along with passages from what they’re reading. This post is my favorite so far — Jacqueline Kennedy, circa early 1960s, on the presidential plane reading DHARMA BUMS by Jack Kerouac. Well, we always knew Jackie had great taste.

Even though the First Lady’s left hand is obscuring the book’s front cover, we were able to make a guess based on “Jack” and last name ending with “C” and then searching for Kerouac book covers from this time period. Jackie is reading the Signet paperback edition (October 1959) that sold for fifty cents a copy.

Yesterday (May 8) was poet Gary Snyder’s 83rd birthday — and after posting one of his poems and wishing him a happy birthday, we ran across the above photo of Jackie Kennedy reading THE DHARMA BUMS by Jack Kerouac...and it felt like karma, because Kerouac based one of the book’s main characters, Japhy Ryder, on Gary Snyder. 

Here’s how Wikipedia summarizes the book: The Dharma Bums is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. The semi-fictional accounts in the novel are based upon events that occurred years after the events of On the Road. The main characters are the narrator Ray Smith, based on Kerouac, and Japhy Ryder, based on the poet and essayist Gary Snyder, who was instrumental in Kerouac’s introduction to Buddhism in the mid-1950s.

And here’s a passage from the book — a distinctive Kerouac jazz riff: 

“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.”

JACK KEROUAC, The Dharma Bums

Happy Birthday, Haruki Murakami

January 12 marks the 64th birthday of Haruki Murakami, a novelist whose work I enjoy because it’s original, funny, surreal, and surprising.

Who else could write a detective story featuring an elderly (and rather simpleminded) private investigator that people pay a per diem to locate their lost cats? How does the detective get his clues? By interviewing cats! (That’s his special skill.)

Read an excerpt from the brilliant, charming, funny “Heigh Ho” at The Paris Review here.

To give you a feel for the story, here’s a passage from “Heigh Ho” by Haruki Murakami:

Being able to converse with cats was Nakata’s little secret. Only he and the cats knew about it. People would think he was crazy if he mentioned it, so he never did. Everybody knew he wasn’t very bright, but being dumb and being crazy were different matters altogether.

It wasn’t so unusual, after all, to see old folks talking to animals as if they were people. But if anyone did happen to comment on his abilities with cats and say something like, “Mr. Nakata, how are you able to know cats’ habits so well?” he’d just smile and let it pass. 

“Heigh Ho” by Haruki Murakami is also found in his novel Kafka on the Shore, available at Amazon.com.

Wishing you many more happy birthdays, Mr. Murakami! 

Thoughts About Writing, Quotes by Haruki Murakami

THOUGHTS ABOUT WRITING

by Haruki Murakami

“As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.”

“I didn’t want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that’s a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I’m proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.”

“…if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.”

“…at the time I was fond of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and it was from them that I learned about this kind of simple, swift-paced style…”

“When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.”

“When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real.”

“Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).”

PHOTO: Novelist Haruki Murakami with a cat friend. Cats figure in many of Murakami’s novels — especially THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE (one of my all-time favorite novels), available on Amazon.com.

the feel of it, Poem by Charles Bukowski

the feel of it

by Charles Bukowski

A. Huxley died at 69,
much too early for such a
fierce talent,
and I read all his
works
but actually
Point Counter Point
did help a bit
in carrying me through
the factories and the
drunk tanks and the
unsavory
ladies.
that
book
along with Hamsun’s
Hunger
they helped a
bit.
great books are
the ones we
need.

I was astonished at
myself for liking the
Huxley book
but it did come from
such a rabid
beautiful
pessimistic
intellectualism,
and when I first
read P.C.P
I was living in a
hotel room
with a wild and
crazy
alcoholic woman
who once threw
Pound’s Cantos
at me
and missed,
as they did
with me.

I was working
as a packer
in a light fixture
plant
and once
during a drinking
bout
I told the lady,
“here, read this!”
(referring to
Point Counter
Point.)

“ah, jam it up
your ass!” she
screamed at
me.

anyway, 69 seemed
too early for Aldous
Huxley to
die.
but I guess it’s
just as fair
as the death of a
scrubwoman
at the same
age.

it’s just that
with those who
help us
get on through,
then
all that light
dying, it works the
gut a bit —
scrubwomen, cab drivers,
cops, nurses, bank
robbers, priests,
fishermen, fry cooks,
jockeys and the
like
be
damned.

Photo: Aldous Huxley and his cat muse (crawling up Huxley’s back!…a hallmark of creativity, as Bukowski referenced in “air and light and time and space,” included in a separate post on today’s blog).

The Moving Target, Novel by Ross Macdonald

Yesterday, I finished reading The Moving Target, a novel by Ross Macdonald. I hesitate to label this multilayered book a “detective” novel — even though that’s its ostensible genre. The book — originally published in 1949 — features Lew Archer, an L.A. private investigator, who appears in a series of novels by Ross Macdonald.

While reading the work of this amazing wordsmith/poet, I was struck by its similarity to the best passages in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald — and figured somebody somewhere must have written about this. A quick Google search revealed more than I’d hoped.

My research uncovered a fascinating article entitled “Ross Macdonald’s Marked Copy of The Portable F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Study of Influence” by Robert F. Moss. In the article, Moss demonstrates how Macdonald learned from Fitzgerald on a variety of levels, including language, plot, structure, and technique. Macdonald is quoted as calling Fitzgerald “a dream writer,” “our finest novelist,” and “my master.” Read the entire article here.

To give a sense of Macdonald’s command of language, here is the opening paragraph from Chapter 4 of The Moving Target:

We rose into the offshore wind sweeping across the airport and climbed toward the southern break in the mountains. Santa Teresa was a colored air map on the mountains’ knees, the sailboats in the harbor white soap chips in a tub of bluing. The air was very clear. The peaks stood up so sharply that they looked like papier-maché I could poke my finger through. Then we rose past them into chillier air and saw the wilderness of mountains stretching to the fifty-mile horizon.

While researching The Moving Target, I learned (duh!) that it was made into Harper, a 1966 movie starring Paul Newman. Legendary screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men) adapted the novel for the screen — and considered The Moving Target his breakthrough script (it was his second screenwriting credit). Sounds like a great movie — can’t believe I’ve never seen it.  Newman also starred as Lew Harper (the screen name for Lew Archer) in the 1975 movie The Drowning Pool, based on Ross Macdonald’s novel of the same name.

For more about Ross Macdonald (and in case you missed it), see our article from a few weeks ago to commemorate the anniversary of Macdonald’s birth on December 13th.

Pat Hobby’s Christmas Wish, Story by F. Scott Fitzgerald

PAT HOBBY’S CHRISTMAS WISH (Excerpt)

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

It was Christmas Eve in the studio. By eleven o’clock in the morning, Santa Claus had called on most of the huge population according to each one’s deserts.

Sumptuous gifts from producers to stars, and from agents to producers arrived at offices and studio bungalows: on every stage one heard of the roguish gifts of casts to directors or directors to casts; champagne had gone out from publicity office to the press. And tips of fifties, tens and fives from producers, directors and writers fell like manna upon the white-collar class.

In this sort of transaction there were exceptions. Pat Hobby, for example, who knew the game from twenty years’ experience, had had the idea of getting rid of his secretary the day before. They were sending over a new one any minute — but she would scarcely expect a present the first day.

Waiting for her, he walked the corridor, glancing into open offices for signs of life. He stopped to chat with Joe Hopper from the scenario department.

“Not like the old days,” he mourned. “Then there was a bottle on every desk.”

“There’re a few around.”

“Not many.” Pat sighed. “And afterwards we’d run a picture — made up out of cutting-room scraps.”

“I’ve heard. All the suppressed stuff,” said Hopper.

Pat nodded, his eyes glistening.

“Oh, it was juicy. You darned near ripped your guts laughing –“

He broke off as the sight of a woman, pad in hand, entering his office down the hall recalled him to the sorry present.

“Gooddorf has me working over the holiday,” he complained bitterly.

“I wouldn’t do it.”

“I wouldn’t either except my four weeks are up next Friday, and if I bucked him he wouldn’t extend me.”

As he turned away, Hopper knew that Pat was not being extended anyhow. He had been hired to script an old-fashioned horse opera, and the boys who were “writing behind him” — that is, working over his stuff — said that all of it was old and some didn’t make sense.

“I’m Miss Kagle,” said Pat’s new secretary.

She was about thirty-six, handsome, faded, tired, efficient. She went to the typewriter, examined it, sat down and burst into sobs.

Pat started. Self-control, from below anyhow, was the rule around here. Wasn’t it bad enough to be working on Christmas Eve? Well — less bad than not working at all. He walked over and shut the door — someone might suspect him of insulting the girl.

“Cheer up,” he advised her. “This is Christmas…”

READ THE ENTIRE STORY (ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ESQUIRE, JANUARY 1940) AT PROJECT GUTENBERG HERE.

The Pat Hobby Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald are available at Amazon.com.

John Lennon, Across the Universe (1940-1980)

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

by John Lennon and Paul McCartney (1970)

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,
They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind,
Possessing and caressing me.
Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world. Nothing’s gonna change my world.
Nothing’s gonna change my world. Nothing’s gonna change my world.

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,
They call me on and on across the universe,
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox they
Tumble blindly as they make their way
Across the universe
Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world. Nothing’s gonna change my world.
Nothing’s gonna change my world. Nothing’s gonna change my world.

Sounds of laughter shades of life are ringing
Through my open ears inciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a
Million suns, and calls me on and on
Across the universe
Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world. Nothing’s gonna change my world.
Nothing’s gonna change my world. Nothing’s gonna change my world. 

###

Listen to John Lennon sing “Across the Universe” here.

Happy Birthday, Mark Twain

Today marks the 177th anniversary of Mark Twain’s birth. Born on November 30, 1835, Twain is considered a writer’s writer — in the same league as Shakespeare, Dickens, and Cervantes — an author that both Ernest Hemingway and Kurt Vonnegut considered the greatest of the greats. (Vonnegut even named his son Mark after the venerable author.) William Faulkner called him “the father of American literature.”

To celebrate Mark Twain’s birthday, let’s hear from the master himself — and read his advice about writing.

WRITING ADVICE FROM MARK TWAIN

(author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and scores of other novels, memoirs, essays, and additional literary works)

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

 “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities…”

 “A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.”

 “…use plain, simple language, short words, and brief sentences…don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in…a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.”

 “Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.”

“The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail.”

 “One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.”

“When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.”

 “The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.”

“Write what you know.”

 “To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement …Anybody can have ideas – the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.”

A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote

A CHRISTMAS MEMORY (Excerpt)

by Truman Capote

Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning…Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.

A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable — not unlike Lincoln’s, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. “Oh my,” she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, “It’s fruitcake weather!”

…”I knew it before I got out of bed,” she says, turning away from the window with a purposeful excitement in her eyes. “The courthouse bell sounded so cold and clear. And there were no birds singing; they’ve gone to warmer country, yes indeed. Oh, Buddy, stop stuffing biscuit and fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat. We’ve thirty cakes to bake.”

 It is always the same: a morning arrives in November, and my friend, as though officially inaugurating the Christmas time of year that exhilarates her imagination and fuels the blaze of her heart, announces: “It’s fruitcake weather! Fetch the buggy. Help me find my hat.”