Two carnies are walking down a country road in the pouring rain. The carnival has folded, and they are walking to the next town. They’re cold, wet, and bedraggled. They pass a house and look in the picture window. A father is sitting by the fire reading to his children. His wife sits by his side, smiling at him and the children. One carnie says to the other, ‘Look at that poor bastard. I’ll bet he wishes he was in show business like us.’
In her book LIFE UPON THE WICKED STAGE, Jacqueline Boles quotes this anecdote from her interviews and correspondence with Sally Rand, the legendary fan dancer. Dr. Boles, sociology professor emeritus at Georgia State University in Atlanta, has studied the lives of entertainers ranging from singers, dancers, comics, and others, celebrities and small timers. She spices her social science methodology with personal experiences and wit.
Dr. Boles, a longtime favorite both with students at Georgia State University and an appreciative audience of devoted friends, herself once performed as the lovely young female assistant in the stage and sideshow act of Rex Dane, magician and mind reader, otherwise known as Don Boles, beloved husband and father. She knows first hand the persistence required of entertainers, reporting how she and Don solicited 25 venues to obtain three bookings, a good result but typical in show business.
Studied in Life Upon the Wicked Stage are entertainers from tribal societies through modern Hollywood, shamans who employed the skills of ventriloquism and magic, dancing girls who doubled as prostitutes, court jesters and television stand-up comics. At the core of her research, Dr. Boles has sampled information in 117 biographies and autobiographies of entertainers, and she asks two central questions about the occupation: “why do people choose entertainment and why do they persist?”
You will recognize many of your favorites. Red Skelton, Bob Hope, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, the Marx Brothers, Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke, Sammy Davis, Jr., Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Gunther-Gebel Williams. 117 Stars 117. Plus some whose names you may not recognize but are nonetheless fascinating. Dr. Boles points out common traits, backgrounds, experiences, dreams. What’s best, she does so with great insight and humor.
A guy walks into a bar. He is dirty and smells terrible. Another guy at the bar says to him, “I know it’s none of my business, but, buddy, you smell really bad. Isn’t there anything you can do about that?” The first guy says, “I know I stink. I can’t help it. It’s my job.” The second man says, “What kind of a job do you have?” The first man says, “I clean out elephant poop in the circus.” The second man says, “Well, why don’t you get another job?” The first guy replies, “What, and quit show business?”
Still, there are serious drawbacks that make working in show business no laughing matter: persistent periods of unemployment, because there are never enough jobs to go around, the tragic deaths of talented people like Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Lenny Bruce, Hank Williams.
Life Upon the Wicked Stage by Jacqueline Boles can be ordered on-line at Amazon.com.
Showing posts with label Reading and Writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reading and Writing. Show all posts
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Magical Mystery and Manners Tour
I took a long sabbatical from Paw Paw Bill last year to write a more or less serious article of conventional magazine length about Flannery O’Connor. Nobody gave me this assignment but myself. I thought it would be an interesting experience, a good excuse to travel to Flannery O’Connor landmarks, re-read old favorites, learn some new things. SHENANDOAH, the prestigious literary review of Virginia’s Washington and Lee University, announced plans to devote its 60th anniversary edition entirely to Flannery O’Connor and invited submissions of “essays, poems, short stories, reviews, photographs and other artwork about, related to or in honor of the fiction and life of Ms. O’Connor. “ Well, that was enough encouragement for me and 499 other writers. All the fun in writing is in the writing, none in the publishing. As the deadline closed in on me, I stumbled across the finish line, but at least I had not just pulled up along the way and barfed on the side of the road.
SHENANDOAH has now announced its leadoff batter for the Flannery O’Connor tribute: Georgia State University emeritus professor William Sessions, with Joyce Carol Oates in the clean-up spot. Paw Paw Bill did not make the team. The distinguished editor and short story writer R. T. Smith, wrote, “Although your poem, story, essay or memoir has not been selected for inclusion….” Click here to see for yourself which of those I submitted. You will probably be able to tell that it was not a poem. I tried twice to interview William Sessions, long-time friend of Flannery O’Connor and official biographer, work much anticipated and sure to be extremely important. My requests, both in writing and face-to-face, were gracefully dodged. Perhaps Dr. Sessions knew my high school girlfriend’s mother, who claimed, “nobody will buy the cow, if they can get the milk for free.”
If I had it to do over again, I would pick a different focus. I am currently interested in the aspect of Flannery O’Connor’s work that caused the Catholic Bishop of Lafayette, Louisiana, to ban “the racist texts of Flannery O'Connor" from the schools in his diocese. An English teacher at Opelousas Catholic, which serves parishes in the Catholic Cajun country of southern Louisiana, included on the summer reading list for high-school seniors "The Artificial Nigger," Flannery O’Connor’ favorite story of her own. My favorite, too. The Bishop directed “that the books in question should be removed from the reading list immediately." I fear and tremble for Flannery O’Connor’s literary future because of her incisive depiction of the South in which she lived. I fear and tremble for Mark Twain’s greatest achievement, Huck Finn’s musings about the runaway slave Jim. A literary sentiment not shared by African-Americans, I am told: “They don't want to "valorize" Nigger Jim. They want to forget him.” Hal Crowther offers this point in Cathedrals of Kudzu, and it has the ring of inconvenient, disturbing truth.
SHENANDOAH has now announced its leadoff batter for the Flannery O’Connor tribute: Georgia State University emeritus professor William Sessions, with Joyce Carol Oates in the clean-up spot. Paw Paw Bill did not make the team. The distinguished editor and short story writer R. T. Smith, wrote, “Although your poem, story, essay or memoir has not been selected for inclusion….” Click here to see for yourself which of those I submitted. You will probably be able to tell that it was not a poem. I tried twice to interview William Sessions, long-time friend of Flannery O’Connor and official biographer, work much anticipated and sure to be extremely important. My requests, both in writing and face-to-face, were gracefully dodged. Perhaps Dr. Sessions knew my high school girlfriend’s mother, who claimed, “nobody will buy the cow, if they can get the milk for free.”
If I had it to do over again, I would pick a different focus. I am currently interested in the aspect of Flannery O’Connor’s work that caused the Catholic Bishop of Lafayette, Louisiana, to ban “the racist texts of Flannery O'Connor" from the schools in his diocese. An English teacher at Opelousas Catholic, which serves parishes in the Catholic Cajun country of southern Louisiana, included on the summer reading list for high-school seniors "The Artificial Nigger," Flannery O’Connor’ favorite story of her own. My favorite, too. The Bishop directed “that the books in question should be removed from the reading list immediately." I fear and tremble for Flannery O’Connor’s literary future because of her incisive depiction of the South in which she lived. I fear and tremble for Mark Twain’s greatest achievement, Huck Finn’s musings about the runaway slave Jim. A literary sentiment not shared by African-Americans, I am told: “They don't want to "valorize" Nigger Jim. They want to forget him.” Hal Crowther offers this point in Cathedrals of Kudzu, and it has the ring of inconvenient, disturbing truth.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Emerging Writers Network
I bought a new computer a couple of weeks ago, and it has not yet broken me in correctly. It sent out my blog to everyone with whom I have ever exchanged an e-mail. Customer Service Chat Reps. Yard Sale Scavengers. Republicans. So now I am fielding angry complaints like hard grounders at third base and removing the names of the grunting disgruntled as quickly as I can, but it is like pulling burrs out of your butt after stumbling in the woods. Not all of these unintended recipients wanted to tar and feather me. One who works with the Let Them Hear Foundation thanked me and planned to read all my previous blog postings. I never would have presumed to send my blog to Let Them Hear, whom I sometimes, refer to as my California do-gooder insurance advocates. Bless them one and all, busy as they are jacking up insurance companies caught trying to leave the scene of expensive medical treatments such as cochlear implants.
In another case, I did intentionally forward a copy of my recent posting Our Fathers to someone I did not know personally and who certainly had not asked for it. Nonetheless, he replied with an e-mail that his own father was “also WWII, Mason, baseball fan. But maybe a more troubling person to be the son of.” I might not concede that claim without a struggle. My reader included a link to the Granta on-line series of essays about fathers. My favorite was by Hal Crowther, the wonderful author of Cathedrals of Kudzu. A little internet cross-reference about Granta, of which I was shamefully ignorant despite its prestigious literary genealogy, led me to a posting on the Emerging Writers Network, another hole in my literacy. I could not help but linger and look around, wondering if emerging from 30-plus years of working for a living at other things would qualify me. Dan Wickett hosts the Emerging Writers Network site, which grew from his e-mail distribution of book reviews and interviews from 1999 – 2002. Wickett’s “backgrounds and qualifications to be judging the works and words of others?” He says, “They are nothing I have proof of - no University degree in Literature or English. No MFA in Creative Writing, or job history as a book reviewer. My qualifications are a long history of reading literary fiction, in large volumes, and the dedication to passing along my views on such, at as rapid a pace as I can, until the writers of such fiction get more recognition.” This reluctance to engage in own-horn tooting is the only shortcoming of the Emerging Writers Network, a sparking mine of gems. Reviews. Announcements. Litblogs. Author websites. The difficulty is knowing where to start. Pick anywhere.
My first attention was caught by Bonnie Jo Campbell through Wickett’s review of stories from The Southern Review. Bonnie Jo is not a Southerner, but the characters in her stories are the natural neighbors of Flannery O’Connor. Campbell has her own website, where I read two spectacular stories available there. Solutions to Ben’s Problem, takes the form of a bullet point list of advice to a man with a drug addict for a wife. The story begins, “While Connie is at the store buying formula and diapers, load up the truck with the surround-sound home entertainment system and your excellent collection of power tools, put the baby in the car seat, and drive away from this home you built with your own hands.” It ends some-agonizing-and-sweet-where else. Boar Taint, is about farm life for those born there and those who graduated in to it from a Big-10 university ag school. Click on these stories now, if you didn’t already. Get in line behind me on the wait-list at the library for her short-story collection Women and Other Animals. Campbell also writes a blog called The Bone Eye: A Writer’s Adventures.
Legendary Antioch College writing professor Nolan Miller became convinced before he died that there were “too many writers, not enough readers.” Nolan spent more than half his life as fiction editor of The Antioch Review. Students in his cozy college class over the years included Rod Serling, Herb Gardner, Lawrence Block. Nolan had a gift for making all his students feel as special as those famous writers. His life of more than 90 years was not quite long enough to see the internet become the best friend of writers and readers since the invention of the library.
Copyright 2009 by William C. Cotter
In another case, I did intentionally forward a copy of my recent posting Our Fathers to someone I did not know personally and who certainly had not asked for it. Nonetheless, he replied with an e-mail that his own father was “also WWII, Mason, baseball fan. But maybe a more troubling person to be the son of.” I might not concede that claim without a struggle. My reader included a link to the Granta on-line series of essays about fathers. My favorite was by Hal Crowther, the wonderful author of Cathedrals of Kudzu. A little internet cross-reference about Granta, of which I was shamefully ignorant despite its prestigious literary genealogy, led me to a posting on the Emerging Writers Network, another hole in my literacy. I could not help but linger and look around, wondering if emerging from 30-plus years of working for a living at other things would qualify me. Dan Wickett hosts the Emerging Writers Network site, which grew from his e-mail distribution of book reviews and interviews from 1999 – 2002. Wickett’s “backgrounds and qualifications to be judging the works and words of others?” He says, “They are nothing I have proof of - no University degree in Literature or English. No MFA in Creative Writing, or job history as a book reviewer. My qualifications are a long history of reading literary fiction, in large volumes, and the dedication to passing along my views on such, at as rapid a pace as I can, until the writers of such fiction get more recognition.” This reluctance to engage in own-horn tooting is the only shortcoming of the Emerging Writers Network, a sparking mine of gems. Reviews. Announcements. Litblogs. Author websites. The difficulty is knowing where to start. Pick anywhere.
My first attention was caught by Bonnie Jo Campbell through Wickett’s review of stories from The Southern Review. Bonnie Jo is not a Southerner, but the characters in her stories are the natural neighbors of Flannery O’Connor. Campbell has her own website, where I read two spectacular stories available there. Solutions to Ben’s Problem, takes the form of a bullet point list of advice to a man with a drug addict for a wife. The story begins, “While Connie is at the store buying formula and diapers, load up the truck with the surround-sound home entertainment system and your excellent collection of power tools, put the baby in the car seat, and drive away from this home you built with your own hands.” It ends some-agonizing-and-sweet-where else. Boar Taint, is about farm life for those born there and those who graduated in to it from a Big-10 university ag school. Click on these stories now, if you didn’t already. Get in line behind me on the wait-list at the library for her short-story collection Women and Other Animals. Campbell also writes a blog called The Bone Eye: A Writer’s Adventures.
Legendary Antioch College writing professor Nolan Miller became convinced before he died that there were “too many writers, not enough readers.” Nolan spent more than half his life as fiction editor of The Antioch Review. Students in his cozy college class over the years included Rod Serling, Herb Gardner, Lawrence Block. Nolan had a gift for making all his students feel as special as those famous writers. His life of more than 90 years was not quite long enough to see the internet become the best friend of writers and readers since the invention of the library.
Copyright 2009 by William C. Cotter
Monday, March 9, 2009
Yes She Said Yes
I sometimes tell people I was an English major. It is a lie, but it simplifies explaining my employment history. Everybody understands and laughs at Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion repertoire joke that English majors never have any problem finding a job, as long as they can remember how to say, “Do you want fries with that?” Nonetheless, I was not an English major, because I loved reading good writers. One of the best I have discovered recently is an Irish writer named Anne Enright.
Anne Enright sure canwrite. She is extraordinarily original. Because she is Irish, James Joyce comes to mind. And W. B. Yeats. She deserves to be in their company. Enright is a former Dublin television producer and director. Her early books earned high praise but “extremely modest” sales, according to her publisher. Her novel, The Gathering was introduced as a paperback original, with a first printing of 8,000, to avoid the difficult life of a non-celebrity hardback. The story of suicide in an Irish family of 12 siblings, mothers, fathers, grandparents, and household visitors, the novel won the Booker Prize as Britain’s best. Sales have now reached 230,000.
Enright’s collected short stories, Yesterday’s Weather, include her special view of husbands, wives, children, college room-mates, lovers, infidelity, and numerology. In “Luck Be A Lady,” the gambling heroine with a knack for numbers bets, “With a little bit of luck, my luck will run out.” The opera house cleaning lady in a different story, “What You Want,” knows if an angel or the devil offers you three wishes, remember to use one to ask for three more. A gentleman walks by in his full opera rig:
‘You’re singing!’ And I said, ‘Am I? I didn’t even notice,’ and he says, ‘Ah, you’re Irish. Isn’t it marvelous the way the Irish sing while they work?’ And I said, ‘Yes, isn’t it.’ And you know, I have about sixteen things to say to him if he ever stopped by again. Like, ‘Oh, that’s not me, that’s just a tape of Maria Callas I’ve got stuck up my arse.’
Her three wishes?
All right. I’ll tell you what I want. I want a small win on the lottery, just a small one, just a few thousand, so I could feel, for once, LUCKY. I want my son to call me on the mobile phone he bought me for a present, that never, ever rings….More than anything, I want grandchildren. Because grandchildren are simple. You wish for them and you have them. And I don’t care if they are ashamed of me. I want my son who has everything to have something, for once. Something real. To have a heart that isn’t withering in his chest.
The author arranges Yesterday’s Weather in reverse chronological order. Notably this gives the impression for much of the book not of short stories exactly but some narrative form of her own invention, with the rich language, development, and arc of poems. That’s fine with me, because she does it so well. Then toward the end of the volume, as the work dates back a decade, the short stories are more traditionally conceived and executed, like the paintings of Picasso before cubism.
Here are her other titles: The Portable Virgin (1991), The Wig My Father Wore (1995), What Are You Like? (2000), The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002), Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood (2004), and Taking Pictures (2008).
Do yourself a big favor. Go to the library, and check out something she has written. Better yet, go to a bookstore or on-line and buy yourself a copy. You’ll want to have your own to enjoy again later.
Copyright 2009 by William C. Cotter
Anne Enright sure canwrite. She is extraordinarily original. Because she is Irish, James Joyce comes to mind. And W. B. Yeats. She deserves to be in their company. Enright is a former Dublin television producer and director. Her early books earned high praise but “extremely modest” sales, according to her publisher. Her novel, The Gathering was introduced as a paperback original, with a first printing of 8,000, to avoid the difficult life of a non-celebrity hardback. The story of suicide in an Irish family of 12 siblings, mothers, fathers, grandparents, and household visitors, the novel won the Booker Prize as Britain’s best. Sales have now reached 230,000.
Enright’s collected short stories, Yesterday’s Weather, include her special view of husbands, wives, children, college room-mates, lovers, infidelity, and numerology. In “Luck Be A Lady,” the gambling heroine with a knack for numbers bets, “With a little bit of luck, my luck will run out.” The opera house cleaning lady in a different story, “What You Want,” knows if an angel or the devil offers you three wishes, remember to use one to ask for three more. A gentleman walks by in his full opera rig:
‘You’re singing!’ And I said, ‘Am I? I didn’t even notice,’ and he says, ‘Ah, you’re Irish. Isn’t it marvelous the way the Irish sing while they work?’ And I said, ‘Yes, isn’t it.’ And you know, I have about sixteen things to say to him if he ever stopped by again. Like, ‘Oh, that’s not me, that’s just a tape of Maria Callas I’ve got stuck up my arse.’
Her three wishes?
All right. I’ll tell you what I want. I want a small win on the lottery, just a small one, just a few thousand, so I could feel, for once, LUCKY. I want my son to call me on the mobile phone he bought me for a present, that never, ever rings….More than anything, I want grandchildren. Because grandchildren are simple. You wish for them and you have them. And I don’t care if they are ashamed of me. I want my son who has everything to have something, for once. Something real. To have a heart that isn’t withering in his chest.
The author arranges Yesterday’s Weather in reverse chronological order. Notably this gives the impression for much of the book not of short stories exactly but some narrative form of her own invention, with the rich language, development, and arc of poems. That’s fine with me, because she does it so well. Then toward the end of the volume, as the work dates back a decade, the short stories are more traditionally conceived and executed, like the paintings of Picasso before cubism.
Here are her other titles: The Portable Virgin (1991), The Wig My Father Wore (1995), What Are You Like? (2000), The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002), Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood (2004), and Taking Pictures (2008).
Do yourself a big favor. Go to the library, and check out something she has written. Better yet, go to a bookstore or on-line and buy yourself a copy. You’ll want to have your own to enjoy again later.
Copyright 2009 by William C. Cotter
Monday, October 27, 2008
A Second Spring
His Mother’s Place
By Kristina Simms
It was his mother’s place,
With scuppernongs and pergolas
And Japanese magnolias, Rose-of-Sharon,
The old fashioned white and purple kind
And, of course, lycoris and
Camellias and azaleas.
And now it’s his place:
Sawhorses, a stack of splintery pallets,
Two trucks—one dead, one with a busted muffler—
Gutters full of leaves, pecans unharvested,
Cannabis, of course, and
Methamphetamine.
(Copyright by Kristina M. Simms. Used by permission.)
I already had a copy of Tina’s poetry book, A Second Spring, before she sent me the announcement of its availability as a Kindle download. Internet bookseller Amazon came out with its Kindle e-reader just in time for the holiday gadget season last year at $399 each. Tina says, “It so happens that I bought one in a burst of extravagance and just absolutely love it. It is very easy on the eyes and you can enlarge the font if you wish.” Furthermore, “The neatest thing for writers is that you can put your own books on Kindle for free”
Here is the link for Amazon’s Kindle downloads.
http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Device/dp/B000FI73MA
Tina says it is easiest to look up her book on Kindle by the author’s name, Kristina Simms, as the title may produce results only close enough for horseshoes. If you are like me and still whistling past the Gutenberg Graveyard, you can order a copy in paperback.
A Second Spring offers ironic musings on Elvis at the Dentist, the portrait of Robert E. Lee at the Georgia Capitol, and Hollywood celebrities, as well as “finding the unique in the ordinary, beauty in the commonplace.”
Tina also intends to upload to Kindle her nature journal, A YEAR AT THE LAKE. “Whee! Retirement is so much fun,” says the former middle-Georgia schoolteacher who lives in Perry. In addition to her writing, Tina is “a community organizer and proud of it,” a political activist with the Georgia Federation of Democratic Women, an advocate on mental health issues, and a photographer with a beautiful website.
(Copyright 2008 by William C. Cotter)
By Kristina Simms
It was his mother’s place,
With scuppernongs and pergolas
And Japanese magnolias, Rose-of-Sharon,
The old fashioned white and purple kind
And, of course, lycoris and
Camellias and azaleas.
And now it’s his place:
Sawhorses, a stack of splintery pallets,
Two trucks—one dead, one with a busted muffler—
Gutters full of leaves, pecans unharvested,
Cannabis, of course, and
Methamphetamine.
(Copyright by Kristina M. Simms. Used by permission.)
I already had a copy of Tina’s poetry book, A Second Spring, before she sent me the announcement of its availability as a Kindle download. Internet bookseller Amazon came out with its Kindle e-reader just in time for the holiday gadget season last year at $399 each. Tina says, “It so happens that I bought one in a burst of extravagance and just absolutely love it. It is very easy on the eyes and you can enlarge the font if you wish.” Furthermore, “The neatest thing for writers is that you can put your own books on Kindle for free”
Here is the link for Amazon’s Kindle downloads.
http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Device/dp/B000FI73MA
Tina says it is easiest to look up her book on Kindle by the author’s name, Kristina Simms, as the title may produce results only close enough for horseshoes. If you are like me and still whistling past the Gutenberg Graveyard, you can order a copy in paperback.
A Second Spring offers ironic musings on Elvis at the Dentist, the portrait of Robert E. Lee at the Georgia Capitol, and Hollywood celebrities, as well as “finding the unique in the ordinary, beauty in the commonplace.”
Tina also intends to upload to Kindle her nature journal, A YEAR AT THE LAKE. “Whee! Retirement is so much fun,” says the former middle-Georgia schoolteacher who lives in Perry. In addition to her writing, Tina is “a community organizer and proud of it,” a political activist with the Georgia Federation of Democratic Women, an advocate on mental health issues, and a photographer with a beautiful website.
(Copyright 2008 by William C. Cotter)
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Toonamint of Funny
Funny is not as easy as it looks. Many try, and few succeed. A lot of what passes for funny requires having a few drinks first. Most years I give myself a Christmas present. I do not set out to do this, but while I am shopping for other people, I find things I can’t resist. This Christmas I gave myself a book called TOONAMINT OF CHAMPIONS by Todd Sentell. This book reads like Kurt Vonnegut overdosing on five fried foods from Folks, the notorious Southern cholesterol den, formerly called Po’ Folks back when there were more people who could take a joke. "And still would," as Merle Haggard sings. If you can’t take a joke, don’t read TOONAMINT OF CHAMPIONS.
Did you ever dream of playing the Augusta National Golf Club, home of the legendary Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Ga.? Me neither, but that is all Waymon Poodle wants from life in the world Todd Sentell creates in TOONAMINT OF CHAMPIONS. Waymon is a teller at the bank branch located by the condoms and genital lubricant isle of the Publix grocery store on Confederate Victory Parkway in Mullet Luv, Ga. People can’t tell if Waymon is just from the shallow end of the gene pool or has lost his way looking for an E.T. family reunion. Todd Sentell channels the voice and vocabulary of a certain Southern charmlessness as he grants Waymon his dream and in fact makes me happy to be a part of it. He opens our imaginations to a new meaning of Bermuda grass, as the club receptionist, an overheated 79 year old sex pot, flashes Chi Chi Rodriguez at the final hole of the Masters.
You do not need to be a golfer to enjoy this novel. You may be better off if you’re not. There’s a long list of things I have done in my life that I am not particularly proud of. Playing golf is on that list. I played in Atlanta at the Piedmont Park golf course that used to stretch up Tenth Street from Monroe Dr. to Piedmont Ave. My wife played in the Alabama Future Masters Tournament as a pre-teen, the first and only female ever to do so. When they tried to turn her away at the registration table, her Daddy, a venerable South Alabama lawyer and George Wallace delegate to the 1972 Democratic Convention, said, “Show me in the rules.” Immediately after the tournament, the rules were re-written. My wife and I played golf together on the course of the Hotel Mena House at Giza in Cairo, Egypt, the green of one hole close enough to one of the Pyramids you could fling your putter at it. Hazards included wild geese that would steal the ball from your drive right off the fairway. The very existence of grass anywhere on this course was maintained by the method of agriculture used in Egypt since the Pharaohs, flooding with Nile River water, followed by standing back and waiting for the baking sun. Maybe the Hotel Mena House would be the perfect setting for Todd Sentell’s next novel. Maybe he’ll go for professional wrestling. Maybe Georgia politics.
Todd Sentell is not a golf buddy of mine. In fact I have never met him. But he has written a fine book in TOONAMINT OF CHAMPIONS, unless you’ve got something against laughing. A native of Atlanta, Mr. Sentell currently teaches Georgia history and social skills at Mill Springs Academy in Alpharetta, a school for kids with learning disabilities and mild behavior problems. He names his literary influences as Flannery O'Connor and Lewis Grizzard. If you’ve ever read anything written for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that made you laugh because that’s what the writer intended, chances are it was written by either Lewis Grizzard or Joel Chandler Harris.
Copyright 2007 by William C. Cotter
Did you ever dream of playing the Augusta National Golf Club, home of the legendary Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Ga.? Me neither, but that is all Waymon Poodle wants from life in the world Todd Sentell creates in TOONAMINT OF CHAMPIONS. Waymon is a teller at the bank branch located by the condoms and genital lubricant isle of the Publix grocery store on Confederate Victory Parkway in Mullet Luv, Ga. People can’t tell if Waymon is just from the shallow end of the gene pool or has lost his way looking for an E.T. family reunion. Todd Sentell channels the voice and vocabulary of a certain Southern charmlessness as he grants Waymon his dream and in fact makes me happy to be a part of it. He opens our imaginations to a new meaning of Bermuda grass, as the club receptionist, an overheated 79 year old sex pot, flashes Chi Chi Rodriguez at the final hole of the Masters.
You do not need to be a golfer to enjoy this novel. You may be better off if you’re not. There’s a long list of things I have done in my life that I am not particularly proud of. Playing golf is on that list. I played in Atlanta at the Piedmont Park golf course that used to stretch up Tenth Street from Monroe Dr. to Piedmont Ave. My wife played in the Alabama Future Masters Tournament as a pre-teen, the first and only female ever to do so. When they tried to turn her away at the registration table, her Daddy, a venerable South Alabama lawyer and George Wallace delegate to the 1972 Democratic Convention, said, “Show me in the rules.” Immediately after the tournament, the rules were re-written. My wife and I played golf together on the course of the Hotel Mena House at Giza in Cairo, Egypt, the green of one hole close enough to one of the Pyramids you could fling your putter at it. Hazards included wild geese that would steal the ball from your drive right off the fairway. The very existence of grass anywhere on this course was maintained by the method of agriculture used in Egypt since the Pharaohs, flooding with Nile River water, followed by standing back and waiting for the baking sun. Maybe the Hotel Mena House would be the perfect setting for Todd Sentell’s next novel. Maybe he’ll go for professional wrestling. Maybe Georgia politics.
Todd Sentell is not a golf buddy of mine. In fact I have never met him. But he has written a fine book in TOONAMINT OF CHAMPIONS, unless you’ve got something against laughing. A native of Atlanta, Mr. Sentell currently teaches Georgia history and social skills at Mill Springs Academy in Alpharetta, a school for kids with learning disabilities and mild behavior problems. He names his literary influences as Flannery O'Connor and Lewis Grizzard. If you’ve ever read anything written for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that made you laugh because that’s what the writer intended, chances are it was written by either Lewis Grizzard or Joel Chandler Harris.
Copyright 2007 by William C. Cotter
Monday, December 10, 2007
Happy Birthday, Brer Joel
The Wren’s Nest celebrated the birthday of Joel Chandler Harris with a Victorian Christmas Open House, traditional Christmas carols, storytelling and other children’s activities. Everyone joined in the singing of “Happy Birthday” to Joel Chandler Harris. The Wren’s Nest, located at 1050 Ralph David Abernathy Blvd., SW, Atlanta, Ga., was the home of Joel Chandler Harris, author of UNCLE REMUS, HIS SONGS AND HIS SAYINGS, the classic Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and Brer Bear stories.
Storytelling is scheduled every Saturday at 1 p.m. and at other times by appointment. The day my wife and I took our grandson, age 4, our storyteller was Donald. He told us “Brer Rabbit and the Tarbaby,” the Uncle Remus story that has been my favorite since I was my grandson’s age. “Just PLEASE don’t throw me in that briarptch.” Then he told us the African folk tale of “Umdalla and the Glueman,” likely to have been told by Georgia slaves and heard by Joel Chandler Harris. My grandson was transported and delighted, as were my wife and I. Our storyteller also played a game with us. “My name is Donald, and today I brought with me a Doughnut. And a Donkey. And a puppy Dog.”
Everybody got a turn. “My name is Bill, and today I brought with me a little Boy. And his Bunny rabbit. And a Ball.”
My wife said, “My name is Annette, and today I brought with me an Apple. And an Airplane. And ALL my love.”
My grandson was asked, "What is your name?"
He said, "Chance." "
"And did you bring something that starts with the same letter as your name?"
After a while, he answered, "Cookies and Cake."
Lain Shakespeare is Executive Director of The Wren’s Nest. Great-grandson of Joel Chandler Harris, Lain is also a descendant of that other famous and beloved writer. The Wren's Nest is decorated for the Christmas season. My grandson told Lain that the Christmas tree in the parlor needed to have candy canes on it, because they were his favorite. Our tour guide Nannie found some candy canes before we left and presented them to my grandson.
The Wren’s Nest is lovingly and miraculously maintained by its dedicated staff, so that visitors young and old alike can enjoy this true Atlanta treasure, which includes many of its original furnishings, now antiques, bought by Sears & Roebuck mail order. There are pianos, glass bookcases, and wardrobes containing clothes from that era. Joel Chandler Harris had just published his first Uncle Remus book in 1881 when he moved into the house, which he purchased from his employer, THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION. This is the best deal I have ever heard of any employee getting from the AJC. The house was originally constructed as a simple farmhouse in 1870 by George Muse, founder of the longtime Atlanta men’s clothing store with his name. Joel Chandler Harris hired architect George P. Humphreys to remodel the house, creating a one and one-half story residence with a steeply pitched gable roof and latticed porches.
(A special note to The Walt Disney Corporation: Take a hint from The Wren's Nest. Shoot some new scenes for SONG OF THE SOUTH, showing the African Folklore basis of some of the Joel Chandler Harris stories you helped imortalize. Cut out the silliest parts of the live action hopelessly mired in the 1940's. Like Alex Haley, depict the "roots" over several generations. Spend a buck, and update this wonderful piece of American culture. I'll bet there's profit and praise at the end of this rainbow.)
Copyright 2007 by William C. Cotter
Storytelling is scheduled every Saturday at 1 p.m. and at other times by appointment. The day my wife and I took our grandson, age 4, our storyteller was Donald. He told us “Brer Rabbit and the Tarbaby,” the Uncle Remus story that has been my favorite since I was my grandson’s age. “Just PLEASE don’t throw me in that briarptch.” Then he told us the African folk tale of “Umdalla and the Glueman,” likely to have been told by Georgia slaves and heard by Joel Chandler Harris. My grandson was transported and delighted, as were my wife and I. Our storyteller also played a game with us. “My name is Donald, and today I brought with me a Doughnut. And a Donkey. And a puppy Dog.”
Everybody got a turn. “My name is Bill, and today I brought with me a little Boy. And his Bunny rabbit. And a Ball.”
My wife said, “My name is Annette, and today I brought with me an Apple. And an Airplane. And ALL my love.”
My grandson was asked, "What is your name?"
He said, "Chance." "
"And did you bring something that starts with the same letter as your name?"
After a while, he answered, "Cookies and Cake."
Lain Shakespeare is Executive Director of The Wren’s Nest. Great-grandson of Joel Chandler Harris, Lain is also a descendant of that other famous and beloved writer. The Wren's Nest is decorated for the Christmas season. My grandson told Lain that the Christmas tree in the parlor needed to have candy canes on it, because they were his favorite. Our tour guide Nannie found some candy canes before we left and presented them to my grandson.
The Wren’s Nest is lovingly and miraculously maintained by its dedicated staff, so that visitors young and old alike can enjoy this true Atlanta treasure, which includes many of its original furnishings, now antiques, bought by Sears & Roebuck mail order. There are pianos, glass bookcases, and wardrobes containing clothes from that era. Joel Chandler Harris had just published his first Uncle Remus book in 1881 when he moved into the house, which he purchased from his employer, THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION. This is the best deal I have ever heard of any employee getting from the AJC. The house was originally constructed as a simple farmhouse in 1870 by George Muse, founder of the longtime Atlanta men’s clothing store with his name. Joel Chandler Harris hired architect George P. Humphreys to remodel the house, creating a one and one-half story residence with a steeply pitched gable roof and latticed porches.
(A special note to The Walt Disney Corporation: Take a hint from The Wren's Nest. Shoot some new scenes for SONG OF THE SOUTH, showing the African Folklore basis of some of the Joel Chandler Harris stories you helped imortalize. Cut out the silliest parts of the live action hopelessly mired in the 1940's. Like Alex Haley, depict the "roots" over several generations. Spend a buck, and update this wonderful piece of American culture. I'll bet there's profit and praise at the end of this rainbow.)
Copyright 2007 by William C. Cotter
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Flannery O'Connor, Amen
I’ve been dazzled, awed, and humbled by the Sistine Chapel, Notre Dame, Chartres, and other medieval monuments to man’s Christian God. Nonetheless, the gorgeous St. John The Baptist Cathedral in Savannah, within sight of the childhood home of Flannery O’Connor, is enough to make anyone regret not being a Catholic and gives me a new appreciation for her Catholicism. I always dismiss to the back pews analysis of Flannery O’Connor’s writing in terms of her religion. When I read her, I remember the taste of cornbread and collard greens, but when I try to write about her, all my ideas and vocabulary come from the church. I suspect she would get a wry smile out of this.
Born in Savannah, she lived 13 years at 207 East Charlton St, on Lafayette Square. In the back yard of this house, Mary Flannery O’Connor, age 5, taught a chicken to walk backwards, an event captured on film by Pathe News. She later raised swans, geese, ducks, and peacocks on the farm she called Andalusia, on U.S. Highway 441 in the red clay and pine trees of Baldwin County, near Milledgeville. Both of these homes are maintained with reverence and are open to the public. Visitors to Andalusia get to see the PBS video of O'Connor's, "The Displaced Person," which was filmed on site. The day my wife and I stopped in, the place was empty but for Craig Amason, executive director of the Flannery O’Connor-Andalusia Foundation, and his friendly conversation and extensive knowledge were our great luck. A Georgia historical marker just across the highway from the Andalusia hayfield was dedicated this year. O'Connor family friend Mary Barbara Tate spoke at the ceremony: “Those of us who came here years ago to rock on the porch, watch the cows in the pond, gather around the dining table, or talk to Regina over her sewing have a special joy in turning into this dirt driveway knowing that at the end is the place where Flannery O'Connor wrote her stories.” Atlanta novelist Todd Sentell, author of TOONAMINT OF CHAMPIONS, describes the dedication of the Georgia historical marker at Andalusia in "The Intersection of Pick-up Trucks and Holy Water." Mr. Sentell currently teaches Georgia history at Mill Springs Academy in Alpharetta and lists his literary influences as Flannery O'Connor and Lewis Grizzard. TS O’Rama has put together “If Flannery Had A Blog,” a clever and at the same time respectful digest of her non-fiction writings.
Flannery O’Connor is by head and shoulders the only true literary giant Georgia has produced. If you can think of someone who even comes close, let me know, and I will make sure to add to my reading list. If you think someone is better, keep it to yourself, because you are wrong. Flannery O’Connor died in 1964 at the age of 39 of lupus. Only a year or so before that, I was working on The Atlanta Journal as the youngest of young reporters. A more senior reporter scheduled an interview with Flannery O’Connor for another publication and invited me to tag along. However, I had no interest in a Catholic lady writer who still lived with her mother and raised peacocks on a farm in central Georgia. How young was I? That young. The other reporter gave me a copy of “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” I still wasn’t interested. “You’re a damn fool,” my friend said. All these years later the only thing I can say now is maybe I could have been a better and wiser person “if it had been somebody there to shoot” me “ever minute.”
Flannery O’Connor advised a pen pal about writing, “You would probably do just as well to get that plot business out of your head and start simply with a character or anything that you can make come alive…. Wouldn’t it be better for you to discover a meaning in what you write rather than to impose one?” Emory University has opened to the public 274 such letters from Flannery O’Connor to Betty Hester, an Atlanta reader who began their correspondence in 1955 by observing that the main subject of O’Connor’s writing was God. The author responded, “I would like to know who this is who understands my stories.” Ms. Hester worked as a file clerk in an Atlanta credit bureau. She lived a reclusive life and was a lesbian. If you hear whispers, they are only from those who fundamentally miss the point of Flannery O’Connor as a character in her own story, one not so much of this world and certainly not of this body, unless it be Body of Christ.
Copyright 2007 by William C. Cotter
Born in Savannah, she lived 13 years at 207 East Charlton St, on Lafayette Square. In the back yard of this house, Mary Flannery O’Connor, age 5, taught a chicken to walk backwards, an event captured on film by Pathe News. She later raised swans, geese, ducks, and peacocks on the farm she called Andalusia, on U.S. Highway 441 in the red clay and pine trees of Baldwin County, near Milledgeville. Both of these homes are maintained with reverence and are open to the public. Visitors to Andalusia get to see the PBS video of O'Connor's, "The Displaced Person," which was filmed on site. The day my wife and I stopped in, the place was empty but for Craig Amason, executive director of the Flannery O’Connor-Andalusia Foundation, and his friendly conversation and extensive knowledge were our great luck. A Georgia historical marker just across the highway from the Andalusia hayfield was dedicated this year. O'Connor family friend Mary Barbara Tate spoke at the ceremony: “Those of us who came here years ago to rock on the porch, watch the cows in the pond, gather around the dining table, or talk to Regina over her sewing have a special joy in turning into this dirt driveway knowing that at the end is the place where Flannery O'Connor wrote her stories.” Atlanta novelist Todd Sentell, author of TOONAMINT OF CHAMPIONS, describes the dedication of the Georgia historical marker at Andalusia in "The Intersection of Pick-up Trucks and Holy Water." Mr. Sentell currently teaches Georgia history at Mill Springs Academy in Alpharetta and lists his literary influences as Flannery O'Connor and Lewis Grizzard. TS O’Rama has put together “If Flannery Had A Blog,” a clever and at the same time respectful digest of her non-fiction writings.
Flannery O’Connor is by head and shoulders the only true literary giant Georgia has produced. If you can think of someone who even comes close, let me know, and I will make sure to add to my reading list. If you think someone is better, keep it to yourself, because you are wrong. Flannery O’Connor died in 1964 at the age of 39 of lupus. Only a year or so before that, I was working on The Atlanta Journal as the youngest of young reporters. A more senior reporter scheduled an interview with Flannery O’Connor for another publication and invited me to tag along. However, I had no interest in a Catholic lady writer who still lived with her mother and raised peacocks on a farm in central Georgia. How young was I? That young. The other reporter gave me a copy of “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” I still wasn’t interested. “You’re a damn fool,” my friend said. All these years later the only thing I can say now is maybe I could have been a better and wiser person “if it had been somebody there to shoot” me “ever minute.”
Flannery O’Connor advised a pen pal about writing, “You would probably do just as well to get that plot business out of your head and start simply with a character or anything that you can make come alive…. Wouldn’t it be better for you to discover a meaning in what you write rather than to impose one?” Emory University has opened to the public 274 such letters from Flannery O’Connor to Betty Hester, an Atlanta reader who began their correspondence in 1955 by observing that the main subject of O’Connor’s writing was God. The author responded, “I would like to know who this is who understands my stories.” Ms. Hester worked as a file clerk in an Atlanta credit bureau. She lived a reclusive life and was a lesbian. If you hear whispers, they are only from those who fundamentally miss the point of Flannery O’Connor as a character in her own story, one not so much of this world and certainly not of this body, unless it be Body of Christ.
Copyright 2007 by William C. Cotter
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