bookstore holiday shopping 1970-style

During this holiday season, if you happen to board a mysterious Polar Express train that takes you back to 1970 and lots of pale blue eyeshadow, among the New York Times' bestselling fiction books for the year would have been Mario Puzo's The Godfather, John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman, and Erich Segal's Love Story  -- all destined to be Oscar-nominated movies as well.  Long before gift cards and Kindles and internet shopping, people had to actually trudge to stores and wait in line to buy books for friends and/or family, and while they were out their landline phones went unanswered at home and there wasn't even anywhere to Yelp if someone working at the bookstore was rude or incompetent.  (Seriously, thanks and praise to the technology gods for what they have given us in the 45 years since.)

For non-fiction book shoppers, 1970's top NY Times nonfiction bestsellers were The Selling of the President 1968 by Joe McGinnis, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) by David Reuben (Woody Allen apparently read that one), Up the Organization by Robert Townsend, The Sensuous Woman by "J" or Joan Garrity, and The Greening of America by Charles A. Reich.  All titles that sound quite fitting for the beginning of a decade that would definitely leave its mark on American history.

fumio niwa

Today was the birthday of Japanese author Fumio Niwa (born November 22, 1904), who penned many works but is probably best known for his 1956 novel The Buddha Tree.  Niwa's writings often went against the traditional grain of Japanese culture, such as his 1947 The Hateful Age, which focused on the hold an aged grandmother has on her family and their societal obligation to care for her.  Grandma is not lovingly wise and appreciative, however, but rather at a point where her already flawed personality has "coagulated into a solid core of wickedness."  In The Buddha Tree, Niwa's troubled childhood as the son of a Buddhist priest is fictionalized as anything but serene and contemplative. 

Beyond his controversial works, Niwa was known for his charismatic personality and for helping his colleagues as a director of the Japanese Writers' Association.  In his later years he was drawn back to the Buddhism he had rejected as a young man, and he also entered a hateful age of his own through his battle with Alzheimer's.  He died at age 100 on April 20, 2005.

miguel and miguel

Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Unamuno

It's no doubt been noted somewhere and on various occasions that two of Spain's greatest writers, Miguel de Cervantes and Miguel de Unamuno, had the same birthday.  Presumedly born on September 29, 1547, Cervantes famously gave the world Don Quijote, along with the wonderful word quixotic.  Born September 29, 1864,  Unamuno was a writer, intellectual and educator -- and part of the restlessness of thought that brought about Spain's Generación de '98.  One of Unamuno's better-known books was the fictional Niebla (Mist) written in 1914, but he also took it upon himself to pen Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho, a reworking of Cervantes' epic.  Unamuno was dissatisfied with too many tangents in the original version, and he seemed to prefer an individualistic vs. idealistic ending.

The real Don Quixote, he who remained on earth and lives among us with his spirit — this Don Quixote was not converted, this Don Quixote continues to incite us to make ourselves ridiculous, this Don Quixote must never die.

Miguel de Unamuno  

a new york minute circa 1883

New York is one of the most wonderful products of our wonderful western civilization. It is itself a world in epitome. Thoroughly cosmopolitan in its character, almost every nationality is represented within its boundaries, and almost every tongue spoken. It is the great monetary, scientific, artistic and intellectual centre of the western world. Containing much that is evil, it also abounds with more that is good...The record of its crimes is undoubtedly a long one; but when the number of its inhabitants is considered, it will be found to show an average comparing favorably with other cities. Thousands of happy homes are found throughout its length and breadth. Hundreds of good and charitable enterprises are originated and fostered within its limits, and grow, some of them, to gigantic proportions, reaching out strong arms to the uttermost confines of the country and even of the world, comforting the afflicted, lifting up the degraded, and shedding the light of truth in dark places.   **  Willard W. Glazier -- Peculiarities of American Cities (1883)


Pictured:  New York Public Library (1910s) -- Colin Campbell Cooper

dog days of gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a summer novel that begins with the exciting promise of a glamorous season for Nick yet ends with disillusion and tragedy, a thirtieth birthday, and leaves from "yellowing trees" about to turn and start dropping downward into Gatsby's fateful swimming pool.  There's the longest day of the year that Daisy always forgets to remember, Gatsby's lavish weekend parties on endless warm nights, gin rickeys and mint juleps, and lilac trees in the July rain.  But in the middle of another sticky August heatwave, even summer-loving people might start to agree with Jordan Baker's comment that "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."  Or we can just take Tom's bullying advice to just forget about the heat:  "You make it ten times worse by crabbing about it."

Pictured:  Beach Scene with Lavender Sky -- William Glackens, 1914 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

cicada days

“Again and again, the cicada’s untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on thick cotton cloth.”

Runaway Horses -- Yukio Mishima (1925-1970)

(Pictured:  Moonlight View of Tsukuda with Lady on a Balcony -- Utagawa Hiroshige)

born today

 

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 - September 28, 1891), author of Moby Dick, Billy Budd, Typee, and a personal favorite, "Bartleby, the Scrivener."

It is, of course, an indispensable part of a scrivener's business to verify the accuracy of his copy, word by word. Where there are two or more scriveners in an office, they assist each other in this examination, one reading from the copy, the other holding the original. It is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that to some sanguine temperaments it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand. 

Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street -- Herman Melville, 1853