A Romance Story Told Via Song Titles

After I read Amanda Holzer's short story, "Love and Other Catastrophes: A Mix Tape" in the anthology, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003, edited by Dave Eggers (Houghton Mifflin), it became a story I wish I had written.

The story, originally published in Story Quarterly, follows a romance from beginning to end through a series of song titles and the musicians who recorded them.

It starts off with "All By Myself, Eric Carmen. Looking for Love, Lou Reed. I Wanna Dance with Somebody, Whitney Houston. Let's Dance, David Bowie. Let's Kiss, Beat Happening. Let's Talk About Sex, Salt 'n' Pepa. Like a Virgin, Madonna. We've Only Just Begun, The Carpenters. I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend, The Ramones. I'll Tumble 4 Ya, Culture Club. Head Over Heels, The Go-Go's. Nothing Compares to You, Sinead O'Connor. My Girl, The Temptations. Could This Be Love? Bob Marley. Love and Marriage, Frank Sinatra." And ends several songs later with "I Will Survive, Gloria Gaynor. Hit the Road, Jack, Mary McCaslin and Jim Ringer. These Boots Were Made for Walking, Nancy Sinatra. All Out of Love, Air Supply." Finally ending with the song the story began with, "All By Myself, Eric Carmen."

Altogether about fifty songs, crossing different musical genres. Wow, what an ingenious, inventive way to tell a story, making it a fascinating and humorous journey. You could probably do the same thing with book titles as well.

In fact, in the "Contributors' Notes" in the back of the book, the reader is told that Holzer "encourages you to create your own mix-tape tale." Why not?

Oscar Wilde, Gay Or Bisexual?

When asked "What's the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?" ("By the Book," The New York Times Book Review, May 8, 2022), author and journalist Candice Millard (River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile, Doubleday, 2022) responded:

"While reading a biography of the Irish writer Bram Stoker, I learned that he happened to be in New York City during the Great Blizzard of 1888, considered one of the worst snowstorms in U.S. history. The city was buried under 22 inches of snow in Mid-March....Stoker was on an American tour with the British actor Henry Irving, whose career he managed before writing 'Dracula.' Also on the trip was Stoker's wife, Florence, a renowned beauty who had been dating Oscar Wilde--yes, Oscar Wilde--when she met Stoker."

Could it be that Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), the revered Irish playwright, novelist, and wit, was more bisexual than he was homosexual?

Death By Card Catalogue?

Adriana Trigiani, the author of the novel, The Good Left Undone (Dutton, 2022), was asked in the New York Times Book Review's "By the Book" Q & A interview feature (May 1, 2022), "How do you organize your books?"

Her answer: "Touchy question in my home right now. I hope to install floor-to-ceiling shelves with the ladder on wheels, like Audrey Hepburn had in 'Funny Face,' so all the books are in one room. But I'm clumsy and my husband predicts death by card catalog[ue]. Presently, books are everywhere--an enormous cookbook collection in the kitchen..., the hallway, the office, every inch is filled with books. And here's the crazy thing. Whenever I need a title, I manage to find it."

Lucky her. I wish I could always find a particular book among my vast collection.

P.S. Death by Card Catalogue would be an excellent title for a murder mystery.

Science Fiction Writer Samuel R. Delany On His Story Sources

Samuel R. Delany, the award-winning author of many science fiction books, and who recently celebrated his 80th birthday, had this to say to T: The New York Times Style Magazine in its Culture issue (April 24, 2022) about sources for his fiction:

"When I'm writing, I think about the paper in front of me and the story I'm trying to tell. I'm very much aware that almost any idea can be sourced from somewhere, and they're as liable to be from other books as they are from things in life."

Canadian Racism

Malcolm X once said that anything below the Canadian  border was the South, referring to the existence of white racism throughout the United States. That led other blacks to label the so-called "liberal" North as "Up South."

The "Up South" label could just as easily apply to Canada, a destination many fugitive slaves  headed for to gain freedom.

In Norman Jewison: A Director's Life by Ira Wells (Sutherland House Books, 2021), I learned that the Canadian-born film director (born in 1926),whose many films include In the Heat of the Night, A Soldier's Story, and The Hurricane, grew up in a Toronto neighborhood that was a five-minute walk from a Lake Ontario beach. At the beach, there was a sign Jewison would see that said, "NO JEWS, N******[NIGGERS], OR DOGS." The sign, writes Wells, a Canadian academic and journalist, was there to ensure that "the sight of a Black person or Jew" would not hinder the enjoyment of the beach by families seeking relief on a hot summer day. 

So despite being seen as a refuge for runaway slaves and a land that promotes racial tolerance and multiculturalism, Canada had its own struggles with racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry.

Note: Despite his surname, Norman Jewison is not Jewish. He is a white Protestant of British ancestry.

On Being A Biographer

Nancy Milford (1938-2022), the biographer of Zelda Fitzgerald, novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald's widow and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, was quoted in a Washington Post obituary (April 1, 2022) as telling the Chicago Tribune in 2001 that being "a biographer is a somewhat peculiar endeavor. It seems to me it requires not only the tact, patience, and thoroughness of a scholar but the stamina of a horse." 

A Prayer For Writers

The following prayer is from a pamphlet published by The Christophers, a New York City-based inspirational group that was founded in 1949 by Father James Keller (1900-1977), a Roman Catholic priest, who was the son of an Irish immigrant father. According to a Wikipedia article, "The Christophers preach a doctrine of religious tolerance and intend their publications to be generally relevant to those of all faiths."

Their motto is "It's better to light one candle than to curse the darkness." The motto, states Wikipedia, "reflects the philosophical orientation of the organization, which emphasizes positive action to create a better world in such various arenas as political honesty, caring for the sick and poor, and dealing with substance abuse." The origin of the motto, notes Wiktionary, is a proverb (possibly Chinese) and means that "in the face of hopelessness and discontent, it is more worthwhile to do some good, however small, in response, than to complain about the situation."

"Writing is a lonely business, Lord.

A Writer sits at a typewriter [,computer,] or with pen in hand--

and often the page remains blank.

Touch their fingertips 

and jog their brains

with a spark of your creative power.

Gently direct them

to communicate more for truth than profit

to give us the highest aspirations

of the human spirit

while not flinching from our tragic flaws.

Help them

to share with us

moments of adventure

instants of joy

hours of reflection.

Don't let them down, Lord.

Or let them disappoint You.

In print, or on the stage, or on the airwaves

their words shape our very lives, images, or distortions of the

Word that was 'in the beginning.'

Amen."