The Book Shopper

My Personal Atlanta Area Book Calendar - July, 2013

Usually I devote this space to book-related events,  but since I am not particularly intrigued  about any upcoming July book readings, except for Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson's appearance at the Carter Museum and Library on July 16, I will leave you to do your own  searching for worthwhile events. Just visit the links that grace the borders of the blog.

Instead, since I am still buzzed from the Georgia Shakespeare Company's summer production of Metamorphoses, an episodic play based on the myths of Ovid, I will re-appropriate this month's calendar to something theatrical, but still literary.

My longtime partner Denise and I went the company's opening weekend performance at the campus of Oglethorpe University. Denise had already seen this interpretation written by Mary Zimmerman when it was staged here in 2007 and she has never stop talking about it as the best thing she's seen in Atlanta theatre. She was especially captivated by the set design.

Despite the high expectations, she was not disappointed this year and either was I, even though we sat in the balcony discount seats where you look down on the 24 foot pool where the central action takes place. Being a little removed from the waterfront didn't bother me, I just pretended I was Zeus. After the performance, we stayed to listen to director Richard Garner and several cast members talk about Metamorphoses. Garner says that the enormous pool is “eleventh cast member” and he talked about all the daily care required to keep the enormous pool maintained at a comfortable 94 degrees for the actors. Moreover, they must avoid using pool chemicals that would wreck the costumes.

The pool figures prominently in many of the myths such as King Ceyx's voyage which ends when his ship is attacked by Poseidon. The setting also provides some of the most erotic splashing around you'll see this side of Debra Kerr and Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity. (Check out the Metamorphoses promotional  video below– but beware of the Quentin Tarantino soundtrack. Fortunately, that music isn't in the play. )

Laps Interrupted

You know how sometimes you like a movie better the next day, when you kind of ruminate about it. That's the way this production worked for me. I kept enjoying it and thinking about how things were staged (I would like to see it again, just to follow the dialogue closer). The next day while I was at the park pool, it was all I could do to keep from acting like Poseidon and pulling down unsuspecting teenagers to the icy depths of Glenlake Pool for interrupting my lap swimming. The temptation was there. Were the gods testing me or was it just the residual pleasure of the Georgia Shakespeare production? .

Metamorphoses plays until July 21.

 

Revisiting Wilfrid Sheed's Baseball and Lesser Sports

Just like fans of professional hockey and basketball are ending their long seasons and resting their bleary, red eyes from lack of sleep, I have closed the book on Wilfrid Sheed's collection of essays Baseball and Lesser Sports, which I began several months ago (I was briefly sidetracked by another baseball book Robert Weintraub's The Victory Season). Besides I had already read Sheed's sports-related memoir, My Life as a Fan (2001) and found his prose rich and fun to read. I was confident I would return to finish it.

This collection of sports writing published in 1991, (Sheed died in 2011) spans 30 years of Sheed's sports-related essays and though he devotes much of the book to baseball figures such as Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Connie Mack, and Branch Rickey, I was equally impressed with his take on Howard Cosell, John McEnroe, Muhammad Ali and Jack Nicklaus. Most of these are names from the past, I know, but if you are familiar with them at all, Sheed will give you fresh perspectives.

One of Sheed's essays, “Sports Talk” explains the difficulties of sports writing in the modern era citing that some of the master journalists were Damon Runyon, Heywoud Broun, Ring Lardner and Red Smith. Sheed devotes separate essays to baseball Hall of Famer Smith and Ring Lardners' baseball novel You Know Me, Al, which Sheed maintains is a polished novel (though it reads like a serial) and despite Lardner's denial that he (Lardner) didn't consider himself a novelist.

 

Mini-Review: Remembering Your Father with Rick Atkinson

When & Where: Pulitzer prize winning author Rick Atkinson lectured for about 35 minutes about his new book, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 at the Decatur Public Library on June 12, 2013 (just four days before Father's Day). The word “lecture” is a little misleading because although Atkinson provided attendees an overview about World War II, he fills in the facts with so many small narratives from the book that you see Atkinson more as a storyteller than a journalist-historian.

Attendence: Almost a full house of ~150 people, which was double the number of several years ago (September, 2008), when Atkinson was on tour with the paperback release of Day of Battle: The War in Italy, 1943-1944. Both my longtime partner, Denise and I went last week. It was an older crowd. We are not talking World War II vets (they are in their 90s and disappearing at rate of about 800 veterans a day), but more like us – sons and daughters of World War II vets. Denise's father Mickey Koslow (lower left) was in the Army Air Corp in North Africa and Italy and my father Glenn R. Browne (top left) fought in Western Europe. I remember once, when asked about his tour of duty, my Dad remarked jokingly “that he broke the back of the Wehrmacht taking the port of Marseille.” After I read The Guns at Last Light, I will know more what he meant.

Why I Went. I've read the other two books of Atkinson's The Liberation Trilogy: the aforementioned Day of Battle and An Army at  Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943. Both books are extraordinary and there is a graciousness and confidence about Atkinson that is refreshing. His books are as he says, take you from the foxhole to the tactics of the commanders, which the latter is influenced by their own personal histories and temperaments. Atkinson often shows us how “the small catastrophe illuminates the major disasters.” I compare him to Shelby Foote, a writer that Atkinson matches in his storytelling prowess. I have personally given many copies of his books to friends, they all read him and are not disappointed. (When Denise's father Mickey was reading Day of Battle, he'd call her daily to tell her not only how much the book brought back his own memories, but clarified the big picture of what was going on.)

Q & A. Before signing books, Atkinson fielded questions for about 45 minutes from the crowd ranging from the particulars of the mutilation of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's body to speculating on what strategy British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery would have implemented if had lead the campaign in Europe instead of U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower. When a woman asked where she could find research information about her father who was awarded the Silver Star for fighting around Rennes, France in August, 1944, Atkinson asked, “Was he in the 4th Armored Division?” When the woman said he was, Atkinson received a round of applause. We were all amazed --- knowing we were in the prescence of a man who was both “archival rat” (Atkinson's self-reference) and parlor magician.

Worth Mentioning. In 2008, when Denise and I saw Atkinson we had a book signed for her father. This time we had the book signed in the memory of our fathers since Mickey died in 2011 and my father died in 1985. As we have come to expect, Atkinson was warm and accomodating. He knew that Denise, myself and the others who attended were following Atkinson's only mandate from the evening: “That it is our first duty to remember.”

The Two-Five-Oh Posting: A Gala

Unlike the 100^th and 200^th posting milestones of The Book Shopper - Atlanta blog, this week's posting marks the 250th attempt to inform and entertain. It all began with my first posting back in November of 2008 as a companion blog to my long ago book, The Book Shopper: A Life in Review, which by the way, is available electronically or by a long-odds happenstance in some used book store.

There was a quite a celebration for #250: booze, dancing, and flowers. But there were books involved (mostly as decorate accents to the shabby Southern chic décor) in the gala too. Admittedly, to save money, I piggybacked my daughter's wedding on top of the event. My daughter Bonnie is shown here flanked by her sister Cynthia and her virtual step sister Lizzie Casey (my Denise's daughter). These three are more than friends to the blog. They are family. I will admit the wedding event did overshadow the blog celebration, but I have made my peace with that .

If you check the links to the #100 and #200 you'll see kind of Greatest Hits list of Bookshopper Blog entries. In keeping with that tradition, Since #200 there have been some good material in the past year, the Talledega Nights Meets William Faulkner posting, and more real book art featuring the work Brian Dettmer and Jim Simpson's reviews of Jamie Quatro, Claire Bidwell Smith and his series on things found in books.

I hope to be kicking off the next set of 250 postings (collect them all!) as I plan on seeing Rick Atkinson on Wednesday and George Packer the following week. I can't remember since I've been doing the blog a more exciting month in Atlanta. Most of the time it's a little too much for one blog to handle, but I will keep writing if you – the few, the discerning, the irreverent – keep reading.

Book and Paper Artists, Are You Ready to Create?

Sure it's short notice, but Monday, June 3rd is the deadline to submit an application to The Decatur Arts Alliance, who in conjunction with the gallery of The Art Institute of Atlanta-Decatur, is bringing the first juried exhibition of Artists’ Books to the AJC Decatur Book Festival. According to the organizers, “the exhibition introduces a new and exciting visual component to the largest independent book festival in the country.” The exhibit runs from July 19 – September 20, 2013, which includes the Labor Day Weekend Decatur Book Festival. Last year The Art Institute of Atlanta -Decatur hosted a similar exhibit called Wallbound and you can bet The Book Shopper will check it out again. (Shown at the top is a partial image from Ruth Bardenstein's Geometry/Galileo which was in Wallbound). You can find more details to apply here.

If you need an quick,craftier idea, you can always make paper lanterns from paperback books. It's easy. Check out the instructions on my daughter's craft blog. They make excellent patio decorations, especially if creating competitive book art is too demanding. Either way, make a note on your calendar to see the exhibit.

If it's paper and not the entire book is all your interested in, check out the Japanese Papermaking Class being held at the Robert C. Williams Papermaking Museum on the campus of Georgia Tech. The classes are being held from June 17 to June 21 and the registration deadline is Friday June 7th. Contact Virginia Howell at [email protected] or call 404-894-5726.