The Sunday Table

Today is Monday, but I'm a bit of a tardy person, so Monday is a perfect day to introduce a new feature on the Bunny Eat Bunny blog: The Sunday Table.

I live in a building -- we can call it 1455 West End Avenue -- that's filled with bookish people. A poet lives underneath us. An editor lives upstairs and down the hall. There are a couple of leftist journalists and bloggers, one on each elevator bank. And so, like many buildings in New York, 1455 has a book depository: a ponderous old walnut table in the hall where volumes that are unwanted by one apartment's denizens are happily -- even greedily -- snapped up by another's.

It entertains me to see what stays, what goes. And Sundays are a particularly good day to rifle through the table, because people are always making resolutions to clean and pare down and edit on the weekends, so the table fills up. (I have already found Steve Martini's The Judge on our own kitchen table, courtesy of my husband's very very bad book habit.)



If you look very carefully you can see that The Plant that Ate Dirty Socks is covering up a Dick Francis volume, though I can't see which one. I tend to date my career in publishing by volumes like The Plant that Ate Dirty Socks. In 1988 I was working at Scholastic's Apple imprint, editing books very like this one. We all went in for those photo-real images back then: covers that screamed,"Oh my gosh, what wacky things are happening in this story?!?" I'm glad that trend is past, but I know a lot of kids who still love that look. And note the success St. Martin's had with Ted Bell's Nick of Time just last year.

What do you bet that John Grisham's The Chamber is gone next Sunday, if not sooner, and that Time's Great People of the 20th Century will have trouble finding a home. High Blood Pressure for Dummies seems like too silly a title for anyone to pick up ("It's the salt, stupid!"), but there are niche markets in every building, so I won't bet on it.


My own contribution to the table this week, E. Lockhart's Dramarama, of which I owned two copies, disappeared between taking these photos in the early afternoon and coming home in the early evening. Maybe it was the sexy cover or the title or the author's excellent name. Or maybe the Sunday Table is too hard to pass by without taking a bite.

Men Who Read

Is there anything hotter than a man who reads? ALA was in Chicago this past week, and I was able to spend a few hours at the Art Institute. I steered myself away from their astonishing collection of Impressionist paintings, and headed for my faves, the Northern Renaissance masters, but on the way, I turned into a small gallery and beheld....HIM.




Fray Hortensio Felix Paravicino. He's usually in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, for those of you who follow such things. But there he was, in his intellectual and impatient and dark-eyed glory, waiting for me in Chicago.

Don't you just love that El Greco caught him looking up from not one book -- but two! I picture it this way: El Greco walks into Fray H's cell, says, You have to have your picture painted. Abbot's orders. And Fray Hortensio is like: I'll give you a minute to paint me, because yes, I am absolutely gorgeous, but I have got higher things on my mind. I am a 17th-century priest, after all. I am composing sonnets! Writing music! I am reading two books -- at the same time! I'm comparing texts! I am cross-referencing!

To this I say, a scant 400 years later: Let me interrupt your studies, Fray Hortensio! Please!

I flatter myself to think that if I'd encountered guy at the Hungarian Pastry Shop when I was in my salad days...well, he might not have hearkened to his calling. Actually, in that scenario, he would have ignored me for beautifully-proportioned lithe earth-mother of a waitress who would quickly have taken his order. But enough.

The point of this is that men who read are sexy. Especially if they have a Chicago connection. Like this guy...






...and my husband. But that's a blog for another day.

The agent's hat

My first day at the office at Sanford J. Greenburger. What I did today: solved a contractual problem and signed a visionary and innovative client; waited for the computer to recognize that I was a bona fide member of the company; bravely called a publisher to make a deal; happily received flowers from good friends. Read some good unsolicited material, too. All in all, an excellent day.

So today the agent's hat definitely looks like this.

The Little Red Lighthouse

My husband has a sailboat, which we keep in the Hudson River. I have long wanted to take the boat up the Hudson to catch a glimpse of the Little Red Lighthouse from "at sea." So on Tuesday, we took the boat out.

It was a glorious day. Sunny skies, not a cloud in sight. Current was heading in and the winds were favorable. We zoomed up the river and took some glorious shots of the lighthouse.

We also saw this curious Quonset hut, decorated with the image of naked Neptune, a half-naked mermaid, and the Brooklyn Bridge (clad in steel). Also a random angel fish. It's truly wonderful what you can see from the water that you can never see from the shore.


Then, within three minutes, the weather changed dramatically. The wind was fierce. Thunder was rumbling. The sky was black. Lightning split the horizon. The Coast Guard advised "small crafts to seek shelter and put down anchor immediately. If you can hear thunder, you are in danger of being struck by lightning."

Great.

But there's no sheltered cover on the Hudson River, and as the rain beat down on us and we fought to the wind to get the boat anchored, I thought: Wow, what I won't do for my blog.

Poetry Friday: Ben

Who else remembers this paean to a rat as tenderly as I do? I wish I could post the video but I am defeated by technology. It's worth cutting and pasting the link below, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAJV4p0aet4

I never saw Willard (too young at the time and I have always hated horror movies) but I did love this love song to a rodent. Could be why I settled in New York.


Ben, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own
I'll never be alone
And you, my friend, will see
You've got a friend in me (you've got a friend in me)
Ben, you're always running here and there
You feel you're not wanted anywhere
If you ever look behind
And don't like what you find
There's one thing you should know
You've got a place to go (you've got a place to go)

I used to say "I" and "me"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
I used to say "I" and "me"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
Ben, most people would turn you away
I don't listen to a word they say
They don't see you as I do I wish they would try to
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a friend like Ben (a friend)
Like Ben (like Ben)
Like Ben

-- "Ben," by Don Black & Walter Scharf, 1972

Michael Jackson, 1958 - 2009

It's hard not to have your heart break a little for Michael Jackson. Remember the utter joy he displayed in his early performances? As if singing and dancing were the most happy-making thing in the world.

Here's just one more thing to add to his legend. You know who told him to wear the light-colored socks? To draw attention to his feet?

Fred Astaire.

Poetry Friday: Ted Geisel

My brother's little daughter is almost two years old, and of course impossibly adorable. I babysat her not too long ago. Her favorite tape (she's still analog) is a recording of "The Cat in the Hat," by Dr. Suess, of course, read by David Hyde Pierce. I was only with her for 36 hours but I heard it at least 9 or 10 times. Easy.

On the way to the train station, at the end of my stay, the tape was on in the car. My brother (David) and I got to talking about how very subversive the whole poem is. Suppression of ego in favor of id. Sexual desire as personified by the Cat. Abandonment issues. Confessional narratives. Goldfish as Chorus. Et al.

Which led us to ask each other (as the adorable niece dozed in the car seat): What is the BEST line in that book? What's the single most daring idea, most challenging to the status quo?

I don't remember what David said, but for me it has got to be this one:

You sank our toy boat,
Sank it deep in the cake,

"Sank it deep in the cake"!!! That is just THE most anarchic line a writer could write. The pathos of "You sank our toy boat." (The poignancy of "toy boat.") The sadness of the realization that a toy boat can be sunk! AND AS IF THAT IS NOT ENOUGH -- where did the Cat sink it? DEEP IN THE CAKE! The madness that suggests! How can a cake and a toy boat even be in the same place? And if it's deep in the cake, then the cake must be a layer cake. The effort it takes to make one of those (and in 1957, yet -- no mixes). And to frost it. All ruined in a moment. In two lines of handsome dactyls, we understand the enormity of the havoc the Cat has wreaked. Toy: demystified; boat: sunk; cake: ruined; home: violable; thin membrane that holds society together: DESTROYED.

And the niecelet: she may be only two, but as you can see, she was not missing a thing.

If there's another candidate for best Dr. Seuss line, bring it on.