Shelf Actualization

Friday, August 9, 2013

First Line Friday: On the Road

It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these, but today’s first line is, in my opinion, kind of a stinker, even though it leads into one of my favorite books. The first two lines, as a matter of fact, are bits of back story we don’t really need, and that don’t figure in the rest of the novel. But that third line , now, that third line is great. If you ask me, it is the rightful heir to the first line throne. And if I were Kerouac’s editor, I would have lopped off the first two and made that one my opener:

“I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road. Before that I’d often dreamed of going West to see the country, always vaguely planning and never taking off.”

What do you think? Am I off here? Of course I'm not...

Thursday, August 8, 2013

"let fly with the secret pleasure of a bedwetter"

“My bladder was beginning to be insistent, too, and though I was armed with my Policeman’s Friend and would have ordinarily have let fly with the secret pleasure of a bedwetter, I couldn’t see myself pissing down a tube with a lady standing six feet from me.”

— From Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose

The internet is surprisingly short on information about the “Policeman’s Friend” apparatus that Stegner’s narrator is describing above, but I imagine it’s a close cousin of the Stadium Pal "accessory" described by David Sedaris below. Another reason to love curmudeonly ol’ Lyman Ward:

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

How Mark Twain gave us Thurgood Marshall

Margaret Mitchell and Mark Twain are two authors who are often discussed in the context of racism in literature. Gone With the Wind and The Adventures of Huck Finn are two of the most frequently banned books across the U.S.

But while debate rages in school boards across the country, it’s interesting to note that in their personal lives Mitchell and Twain were quite generous to aspiring black professional students. Over a number of years Mitchell secretly funded dozens of African American medical students at Morehouse college and elsewhere, helping to lift up a class of black professionals in the segregated South.

And while Twain’s philanthropy centered on one student in particular, it may have had an even more powerful impact on society. Warner T. McGuinn, the man whose room and board Twain paid at Yale Law School, graduated #1 in his class and went on to become a force in the early civil rights movement in Maryland and a mentor to Thurgood Marshall. In a letter to the dean of the law school, Twain explained his reasoning for supporting McGuinn:

“I do not believe I would very cheerfully help a white student who would ask for the benevolence of a stranger, but I do not feel so about the other color. We have ground the manhood out of them, and the shame is ours, not theirs, and we should pay for it.”

Interesting, no?

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Thurber gets a reboot

Here’s one I really want to see: James Thurber’s short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is being re-made into a movie this year. The last time this was tried, in 1947, Danny Kaye turned the picture into a screwball comedy only loosely based on the original. Okay, fine, whatever. Thurber was a very humorous writer, and “Mitty” was a slightly campy tale that could certainly be taken that direction.

This time around Ben Stiller acts and directs in a reboot that promises to be much truer to the heart of “Mitty.” I can’t comment on its merits as a true-to-the-story adaptation, but it looks like it’ll deliver far less mad-cap comedy, and far more insight into the secret psyche of the inveterate daydreamer- which is really what the original story was all about.

But don’t take my word for it. Here is a link to the original story, and here is Stiller’s latest trailer: