Andrew Sean Greer and the Art of Writing

Andrew Sean Greer (right) talking to 5 month nephew Arlo, who is sitting on the lap of Greer's identical twin brother, Mike. New York Times photo by Heidi Schumann

Earlier this week, the New York Times' new Bay Area section published a story I wrote on the Sunday routine of novelist Andrew Sean Greer.

The article touched on what Greer did on a typical Sunday. One thing he does not do is write. When he got together with his husband, David Ross, 13 years ago, he promised that he would avoid working on weekends.

Of course, I couldn’t interview Greer and just ask about when he drinks his first cup of coffee in the morning. I am a writer, too, albeit a nonfiction, writer, and I wanted to hear about Greer’s writing habits. So here are some tidbits from the conversation we had.

Greer spent much of the past year in New York, working as a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library. Greer applied for the fellowship in order to work on his novel, which is a book about characters who time travel between 1918 and 1941. When he got to New York, the pieces of the novel he had written were set in San Francisco, much like two of his previous books, The Confessions of Max Tivoli and The Story of a Marriage.

But Greer couldn’t resist the vast resources available to him at the library. He found himself captivated by the library’s books, newspapers, and other sources about New York. He walked the streets everyday, sat in cafes, and dined out with friends. Soon the atmosphere of New York had permeated his psyche and Greer tossed the 100 pages he had written and started afresh. He set the next draft in New York and added new characters.  He wrote about 150 pages in the following months.

“Ideally, your head is in your novel most of your waking life,” said Greer. “All of your spare moments, conversations you overhear, thoughts you have, all should be going to the novel. If I sort of let myself forget about the book, it’s hard to get back into it again.”

When Greer is writing intensely, he tends to read classic rather than contemporary literature. “I’m reading Colette right now. I will pick up Proust. I find old fiction helpful. It’s classic for a reason. It is really well done.”

Greer and Ross moved back to their home in San Francisco’s lower Haight at the end of the fellowship in May. Greer spent much of the next few months away from home. He traveled to Italy to read from his work at Letturatura, the Rome Literary Festival. It was an outdoor evening performance (video here)at the Basilica di Massenzio near the Forum. (“It was a warm Roman night. The Forum was all lit up. It was so beautiful it was amazing.”) He also spent six  weeks at a writer’s colony and visited Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman at their summer home in Maine.

So Greer didn’t start to look for a new writing office until September, a search that he Twittered about.

You might think that a writer as successful as Greer might go for a high end, modern office with a view of the city. But it seems that he prefers grunge. Or at least redone grunge. He described his previous office as a “crappy room in someone’s basement.”

He looked all around and almost took an office on a houseboat because he couldn’t find anything else. Then he found a spot in the Mission, with a few small rooms and a loft that lets in lots of light.

“”It’s really nice but it’s really crappy," said Greer. "It looked like a meth lab when I first rented it, so that’s why I had to paint the whole thing. The room was bright pink which is why I had to paint it white.”

Greer calls himself an Internet addict. When he gets up he goes straight to the computer, reads the New York Times online, reads various progressive blogs, but skips literary blogs because he dislikes it when bloggers write snarky comments about his friends. He is so addicted to surfing the web (and who isn’t?) that he uses the program Freedom to limit his Internet access. Before he leaves his home, he programs his Mac Air not to let him go on the web for at least 4 hours. Then he walks to the office,

“It’s a 15-minute walk. I love it because there is a transition. The mind kind of gets into the novel and the one thing I am thinking of on the way over is the first sentence of the next paragraph. Half the battle is getting the next sentence. At least it’s a way to start.”

Then Greer laughed and added: “And it’s usually followed by a nap, and then lunch, all the procrastination I can get in.”

James Baldwin visits San Francisco in 1963 to explore the lives of urban youth

In 1963, the author James Baldwin came to San Francisco to explore the increasing sense of bitterness and isolation felt by urban youths in America. He chose San Francisco in order to peer beneath its veneer of liberal acceptance. He found a city that he declared was no better than Birmingham, Alabama. Racism and discrimination were everywhere, if a little more genteelly hidden.

A KQED television crew followed Baldwin and produced a show called "Take This Hammer." You can see the video here on the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive website.

The video is interesting for its view of San Francisco and for the views expressed by African-Americans living here. The camera follows Baldwin on a road winding into the city and it looks like the road from the airport before it became the lovely highway we know today as 101. There are shots of the Bayview district and a housing project.

Baldwin goes to a community meeting in Bayview where he tries to assess the mood of the black community. In one amazing exchange, a mother declares "There will never be a Negro president in this country. If you can't get a job, how can there be a Negro president?"

Baldwin disagrees and predicts there will be a black president one day, but it will be in a country that looks very different than the United States in 1963.

It only took 45 years for Baldwin's prediction to come true.

(via Laila Lalimi and Maud Newton)

Surviving the Literay Death Match

This is a shot of me on the stage at Literary Death Match. I don't know why it's red, but all the photos posted on the website from that night are red. It's probably a way to convey the mood of the evening.

Because this certainly was an event like no other. More than 100 people crowded into the Verdi Club on Potrero Hill in San Francisco to hear four authors read a piece and to hear biting and hilarious pronouncements from three judges.

While I wasn't the oldest reader (I think Lynka Adams is older than me) I certainly was the most staid. I read a piece on my growing obsession with James the skunk man who deftly relieved my home from a colony of skunks.

My piece differed from the three others in part because there was no fucking, sucking, orgasmic recreations, or discussions of getting high. Marijuana did not waft through the room as I spoke. I was not dressed in a dominatrix outfit, nor did I bring three people clad in white onto the stage with me.

In short, I did not win.

Amber Tamblyn judged my performance, which she characterized as "nice." Talk about damning with faint praise.

But who could blame her? I elicited the fewest laughs of any of the contestants.


I did have my fans, though.

Here's what one tweeter said:

@frannydink got robbed tonight - just saying! #literarydeathmatch11:41 PM Oct 15th

The Examiner called my story the best overall story. 

Still, winning or losing was not really the point of the evening. It was having fun, with literature at the center. Oh, and throw in lots of booze, too.


Hats off to James Nestor who took home the prize. Tod Goldberg and Lynka Adams were also great. The other judges were David Wiegand from the Chronicle and Paul Madonna, who draws the comic strip All Over Coffee.

And thanks to Todd Zuniga and Sky Hornig of Opium Magazine for putting the entire thing together,



 

Literary Death Match -- May the most outrageous story win

Tonight is the day I get to humiliate myself.

For some unknown reason, I said yes when asked to participate in Literary Death Match.
For all those people out there over 40 (and I must include myself in this category) this is a series put on by Todd Zuniga’s Opium Magazine. It pits four writers against one another is a sort of literary battle.  I expect that the zaniest, funniest, most outlandish pieces will get the most applause.

I will do my best. I vacillated between pieces to read. My choices were an essay about the time I got mugged while in labor and how I fell hard for the man who rid my house of skunks.

You will have to show up at Literary Death Match to find out which story I chose.

My opponents are the novelist Tod Goldberg, writer Lynka Adams and James Nestor, author of Get High Now.

The judges include actress and poet Amber Tamblyn, SF Chronicle scribe David Wiegand, and artist Paul Madonna.

It’s at 9 pm at the Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa Street, San Francisco. (map)

The Death of One Historian Leads Another to Dorothea Lange

In 1932, the photographer Dorothea Lange and her husband, the famed Western illustrator Maynard Dixon, spent the summer on a two thousand acre ranch along the shores of Fallen Leaf Lake near Lake Tahoe. It was an idyllic period, not only because the couple got to spend time with their children, who had been living in boarding schools, but because photographer Imogene Cunningham, her husband Roi Partridge, and their children were also there.

For months, the two families lived in a timbered hunting lodge that had been loaned to them by the daughter of E.J. “Lucky” Baldwin, who had made his fortune in the Nevada silver mines. They clambered on granite boulders, swam in the cold clear water, cooked and ate fish they had caught, and cleansed themselves in a sweat lodge that Dixon built. It was a magical interlude during the Great Depression, and a reflection of a particularly Western bohemian lifestyle.

On Monday, dozens of descendants of Lange, Dixon, Cunningham, Partridge, and Lange’s second husband, the UC Berkeley economics professor Paul Taylor, will gather in Berkeley to celebrate the publication of a major new biography of Lange. The book, Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, is the culmination of eight years of work by Linda Gordon, the Florence Kelley Professor of History at NYU and one of the country’s preeminent historians.
   
    But the celebration will be bittersweet. The party will be held at the home of the late Henry Mayer, who was working on a book about Lange when he died of a heart attack in July 2000. After Mayer’s untimely death at 59, his widow looked for someone to continue the project, and Gordon stepped in.

“Linda has fulfilled her own vision, but at the same time has written a definitive work on Dorothea Lange that would make Henry very happy,” said Robert Weil, an executive editor at WW Norton who worked with both writers on the biography.

Gordon will be reading from the book on Tuesday Oct. 13 at 6 p.m. at Book Passage in the Ferry Building and on Wednesday Oct. 14 at 7:30 p.m. at Kepler’s in Menlo Park.


Dorothea Lange was born in New Jersey but settled in the Bay Area in 1918, living first in San Francisco and then in Berkeley. A documentary photographer who excelled at capturing the plight of the poor and downtrodden, she is best known for “Migrant Mother,” her 1936 haunting portrait of a down and out farm worker. Lange had been traveling around for the Resettlement Administration documenting the life of sharecroppers during the Depression when she spotted Florence Owens Thompson resting under the shelter of a canvas tent in Nipomo, California. Lange took six portraits, and the one of Thompson cradling her infant with another child nestling against her shoulder became an iconic image of the period.

Gordon, 69, has written extensively about women and women’s rights, including books on family violence, birth control, and the history of women’s work lives. Her 1999 book, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction, a narrative about a group of white vigilantes who in 1904 objected to Mexican American parents raising white foster children, won the prestigious Bancroft Prize in history.

Gordon was wary at first of writing a biography since she is more interested in how social movements, rather than individuals, impact history. But the more she learned about Lange and her commitment to documenting the underside of American life, the more intrigued she became.

 “I am not a biographer,” said Gordon. “But as I got to know Lange, I realized she was a good subject for me. She was a complex person. She was not a perfect and I am not good at writing about celebrated heroes. She intersected so many important periods in the 20th century. “

 Gordon also realized that as a female photographer, Lange’s insights into the Depression and World War II told a different story than is usually told in history books. For example, many people conjure up images of long lines of men waiting to get into soup kitchens or other images of urban life when they think of the Depression. Lange, explored how the Depression affected rural inhabitants, a group that the New Deal did little to help, she said.

Lange was hired by the Army in July 1942 to document the roundup and internment of the 120,000 Japanese-Americans living on the west coast. Anti-Japanese hysteria was so strong after the bombing of Pearl Harbor that few spoke out against the massive jailing, but Lange was opposed from the start, said Gordon. The Army told her to take pictures, but prohibited her from shooting photos of barbed wire fences, guard watchtowers, armed soldiers, or anyone resisting the round-up. Still, Lange managed to convey the indignity of the internments and the brutality of the camps in the 800 photos she took. Army officials, suspecting her sympathies lay with the Japanese-Americans, eventually fired her and impounded all the photographs.

Gordon’s book documents how Lange used her photography as a social tool, but it also focuses on the artistic, bohemian communities Lange created first in San Francisco and then in Berkeley. When Lange met and married Maynard Dixon in 1920, she entered into a world of artists who were exploring new modern techniques and who gathered socially at Coppa’s, an Italian restaurant in the Monkey Block building on Montgomery Street. (The Transamerica Pyramid now sits there.) Lange also took portraits of influential San Franciscans and linked up struggling artists with wealthy patrons, said Gordon. After her marriage to Paul Taylor in 1935, Lange created another circle in Berkeley, one made up of artists like Imogene Cunningham and her painter husband Roi Partridge, but also of progressive academics.

            ***


Henry Mayer had recently completed All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery, when he decided to write a biography of Lange. The Garrison book, which won the 1999 J. Anthony Lukas Book prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award, cemented Mayer’s reputation as a formidable independent scholar. He had taught history at The Urban School of San Francisco before turning his attention to biography, and he was intrigued by Lange’s passion for social justice, according to his editor, Weil.

“I listened to whatever Henry Mayer told me,” said Weil, who spent “thousands of hours” working with Mayer on the Garrison book. “His sensitivities were so acute. He understood human drama and was fascinated by Lange, of her ability to address the inequities of the world. He was so strongly compelled to do this book.”

Mayer had spent about two years collecting information on Lange (I was one of his research assistants) and had written an introduction and first chapter when he and his wife, Betsy Mayer, went on a bicycling trip to Glacier National Monument. Mayer and Betsy had trained for the trip by taking 35-mile rides across the Golden Gate Bridge and around other parts of the Bay Area. But during the trip, Mayer had a heart attack. He left behind Betsy and two children, Eleanor and Tom.

Mayer had received a significant advance for the Lange book, and after the funeral Betsy Mayer called up Weil and offered to return the money. “I figured it was done,” she said. “I called up the editor and asked what were the courtesies? Should I return the advance?” Weil told her no, and encouraged her to find another writer to continue the project.

“That was one of the most painful things about losing him,” said Betsy. “It was a catastrophe to lose him right at the point where the momentum (for the book) was building.”

Betsy wanted to find a writer who could do justice to both the seriousness of the material and the strength of the story. She didn’t want the book to be too academic in tone, but one that appealed to a broad audience. Through a friend, Betsy learned of Linda Gordon. At first, Gordon said she wasn’t interested.

“She’s a serious historian, a well-known writer and she had never done a biography and had serious doubts because it is a different form,” said Betsy.

But when Gordon was visiting family in Portland, she decided to stop by the Mayer house in Berkeley and examine the files. Gordon and Betsy developed an immediate respect for one another. Betsy read Gordon’s book on the Arizona orphan abduction and saw she was a graceful writer. Gordon began to ponder the possibility of using Mayer’s material. After a time, they both agreed that Gordon was the right person to continue the Lange biography.

In an unusual move, Gordon took over Mayer’s contract from Norton and began to work with Weil. From the start, it was clear that the new book would be Gordon’s rather than Mayer’s, and everyone agreed that was the way the project should be approached.

“It would have been inappropriate of me to shoehorn Henry’s vision onto Linda,” said Weil.

    While Mayer had collected a large amount of research material and had written the beginning of the book, Gordon the project all over again. She traveled frequently to Berkeley to look at oral histories and other archival materials at the Bancroft Library and interviewed the descendants of Lange, Dixon, Taylor, and Cunningham. Many of them will be at the celebration at the Mayers’ home on Monday.

Betsy got a copy of the book two weeks ago and thinks Gordon has written a compelling story, one that shows Lange’s strong sense of social justice as well as her passionate, human side. “It is lovely, and it is lovely for me,” she said.

And in a nice footnote, Weil has continued his relationship with the Mayer family as well. Mayer’s son, Tom, came to work for Weil as an editorial assistant a few years ago and has since risen to an editor position.

“The Mayer name lives on in Tom Meyer,” said Weil. “Tom has all of Henry’s social passions and convictions.”

The San Francisco Chronicle Changes its Bestseller List:

For the last two weeks, readers of the San Francisco Chronicle list have been getting something new: a bestseller list not compiled by the newspaper but one put together by the trade association of independent bookstores.

It is a significant change, but one most people probably didn’t notice.

For dozens of years, the San Francisco Chronicle had compiled its own weekly list of local bestsellers. Every Monday, a staff person would call around a dozen or so bookstores to find out which books had sold the most copies the previous week.

Since the Bay Area has such an avid literary community, the Chronicle bestseller list often served as an earlier indicator for books that went on to capture spots on national lists. In addition, getting on the list was prestigious in itself. “A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller” is a good thing to print on a paperback.

So why did John McMurtrie, the editor of the books section, give all that up?

Time, time, time, and a respect for independent bookstores.

The recent cutbacks in Chronicle staffing levels have affected the book section, and now there is only one editorial assistant for the department, according to McMurtrie. Compiling the list took up a good chunk of time.

But more importantly, McMurtrie came to realize that the regional bestseller list put together by the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association was actually more comprehensive than the Chronicle’s list. The NCIBA polls around 55 independent bookstores in the nine-county Bay Area region for their bestsellers, providing a more accurate snapshot of sales.

“I’m all in favor of championing independent bookstores, of sending readers their way,” said McMurtrie. “They’re an important local resource in so many ways.”

Hut Landon, the executive director of NCIBA, is delighted by the switch because he thinks publishers will now have to pay more attention to independent bookstores rather than the big chains like Barnes and Noble or Borders Books.

“Literally, the only way to get your book on a bestseller list in the Bay Area and the Chronicle will be to get on the list in independent bookstores.”

So if an author comes to town and only does an event at Barnes and Noble, rather than at Book Passage or A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland, he or she may not make the list.

“It’s going to be good for the independents,” said Kathleen Caldwell, owner of A Great Good Place for Books. “Publishers will take us much more seriously. They are going to want their books on the San Francisco Chronicle list and they’ll put their authors in an independent rather than Barnes and Noble because those sales won’t be reported on the list.”

If this switch had been done a year ago, it would have been bad news in some ways for local authors. That’s because it took a lot longer for a book to get on the NCIBA list than the Chronicle list. My book, Towers of Gold, is a case in point. It first made the San Francisco Chronicle list on Nov. 30, 2008 but didn’t show up on the NCIBA list until Jan. 25, 2009 – almost two months later.

The NCIBA has revamped the way it calculates bestsellers since then, according to Landon. The list is timelier, with information gathered on Monday for previous week’s sales and posted by Wednesday. The bestseller list is calculating using a point system and is not merely a reflection of the sheer number of books sold.

A book that sells 250 copies in one book store will get points, but not as many points as if that same book sells 25 copies in 10 different book stores, said Landon. Books also get points for being on an individual bookstore’s bestseller list. So the broader a book is selling, the more likely it will make the list. “You don’t have to have a huge book with a huge budget with big author events to make the list,” said Landon.

But the switch will probably make it harder to make the list. In the past, if a book came out locally and the author had multiple events at Bay Area bookstores as well as a book party, the chances of getting on the Chronicle list was high. It often only took sales of 100 books to get on that list. And getting on the list in the early days of a book’s release helped build that all-too-important momentum.

A comparison of the Sept 13 fiction bestseller list prepared by the Chronicle staff and the Sept. 13 NCIBA list shows they are different. There were 4 books on the Chronicle list that did not make the NCIBA list, including The Sower by Kemble Scott, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Vergese, ad 286 Bones by Kathy Reich.

The NCIBA list had some names the Chronicle did not, including Lisa See's Shanghai Girls, The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks, The White Queen by Philippa Gregory, and Homer &  Langley by E.L. Doctorow.

The two nonfiction lists had even more disparity: The Chronicle's list included Farm City by Novella Carpenter, The Healing of America by T.R. Reid, Born Round by Frank Bruni, and The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. The NCIBA list had Shop Class As SoulCraft by Matthew Crawford, Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Republican Gomorrah by Max Blumenthal, and Official Book Club Selection by Kathy Griffin.

Interesting, huh? I don't know what it means, but it is interesting.

Towers of Gold Stage at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 9

Towers of Gold Stage at HSB

Banner across top of stage

 

"Gold" coins with an image of Isaias Hellman

I already said my thanks to my cousin, Warren Hellman, for throwing Hardly Strictly Bluegrass #9 and for naming its 6th stage the Towers of Gold Stage after my book, Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California.

My highest moment of joy came Sunday afternoon when Marianne Faithfull, one of my all-time favorite artists, sang at the Towers of Gold Stage. As I twittered at the time: "Pure bliss."

The Mysteries of Chinatown Revealed

As a native San Franciscan, I have always loved visiting Chinatown, with its storefronts crowded with cheap consumer goods and its grocery stores beckoning with the glistening brown bodies of roasted duck.

When I was growing up my father used to take my brothers and me to the Hang Ah tea room on Pagoda Place every Sunday for dim sum. It was in that crowded restaurant that I first developed a taste for fried taro root and ginger infused pot stickers.

I am familiar with Chinese restaurants, fortune cookies, and firecrackers. But I regret to say that I still feel ignorant about the character of the Chinese. I see the elderly Chinese men and women in their blue silk Mao jackets reading Chinese newspapers and can’t reconcile them with the hip, impeccably dressed Chinese artists and engineers who make up much of the younger generation.

That was until I read Kathryn Ma’s excellent collection of short stories, All That Work and Still No Boys.
 
In this short story collection, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award, Ma peels back the curtain of the Chinese culture to reveal its humorous, exasperating, and moving forms. She is in a perfect position to serve as an ambassador between the two worlds; her parents were born in China and immigrated to the United States while Ma practiced corporate law in San Francisco for years before pursuing writing.

In the story that gives the collection its name, Ma tells the story of a woman who needs a kidney transplant. Of her four children, only her son is a match, but the woman cannot imagine asking such a favor from her only male heir. So she keeps on pestering her daughters for one of their kidneys. Her mother’s preference for her son – which is completely acceptable in Chinese culture – seems sexist in modern California and Ma weaves this dichotomy into an absorbing and moving story.

Not all of Ma’s characters are Chinese-American and she shouldn’t be pigeonholed as an ethnic writer. Her use of words and the tension she draws in her descriptions of family transcend any label. Race is just one theme that Ma explores in this winning collection.

All That Work and Still No Boys has been widely praised. Bestselling novelist Curtis Sittenfeld wrote on the Daily Best website that the collection was “completely wonderful.”

Ma will be speaking at Mrs. Dalloway’s Books in Berkeley on October 1 at 7 pm. She will also speak at 2:30 pm on Saturday Oct. 3 at the Chinatown branch of the San Francisco public library. Ma will also participate in Litquake, the city’s foremost literary festival, at a forum for first time authors. That event will be at 5:30 pm Oct. 12 at The Foundation Center at 312 Sutter Street.

Now that I have read the book, I feel I have a slightly better understanding of this group that has been so essential to the development of California. I will also never take my kidneys for granted again.

Why Does Greg Mortenson Need a Bodyguard? Tidbits from the Carmel Authors and Ideas Festival

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I spent the weekend at the Carmel Authors & Ideas Festival, but haven’t blogged about it yet since Yom Kippur came between my return and my computer keyboard. (I did twitter during the conference, though.)

This is really one of the most interesting literary conferences on the West Coast. Started three years ago by Jim and Cindy McGillen (he made his fortune as one of the producers of the TV show, Dallas) it is modeled on the authors’ festival held every year in Sun Valley, Idaho.

About 30 authors and public figures are invited to each year, and each one is supposed to be a dynamic public speaker. Most get up on stage and talk to the 500 or so members of the audience for 15 minutes. It’s not a book reading, but a performance, where authors talk about their inspiration, their process, and the content of their books. The higher profile speakers get to talk longer.

The big names this year were Greg Mortenson, Elizabeth Gilbert, P.J. O’Rourke, Carl Hiassen, David Kennedy, Abraham Veghese, Reza Aslan, Michael Krasny, Carlos Prieto, and Shelby Steele.

Some of the less well known (but equally impressive) writers included David Ulin, Rick Wartzman, Louise Steinman, Kemble Scott, Cara Black, Frank Portman, Shana MacCaffey, Neil Hotelling, David Roche, Don George, and Rodes Fishburne, among others. (I spoke as well.)

The McGillens really know how to treat authors well. (Since most of the time authors don’t get treated to much, a little hospitality goes a long way.) They paid for everyone to stay in charming inns around Carmel. They fed writers all day long. They hosted two fabulous dinners, including one on Carmel beach with grilled salmon, steak, fresh tomatoes, bean salad, couscous, brownies and strawberries. You could drink mojitos or wine or beer. Bonfires blazed on the beach as the sun set.

Here are some of the highlights:

Greg Mortenson is so popular that he travels with an Israeli bodyguard. It’s not to protect him from irate Taliban members who are mad at all the schools he’s helped set up in Afghanistan. It’s to protect him from his fans.

And boy does Mortenson have fans. KQED host Michael Krasny interviewed him on stage. I didn’t find Mortenson particularly articulate, but he has clearly influenced a lot of love. After his talk he signed books for four hours straight. I kept passing by the table where he was signing and noticed how intently he talked to each fan.

His constant touring seems to have taken a toll, though. Mortenson looked very tired, like he hadn’t slept much, had been eating all the wrong foods, and hadn’t gotten outside nearly enough. Mortenson’s 13-year old daughter came in on Friday to do a presentation with her father to Monterey County middle and high school students. She told one organizer she hadn’t seen her father in two months.

Elizabeth Gilbert swooped in and out of the festival as befits an author of her standing. I won’t forget the image of her sitting in the green room surrounded by a large group of adoring fans. They were all female high school students who were volunteering at the festival, and they eagerly discussed love and writing with Gilbert.

Here is what I tweeted about Gilbert:

·  elizabeth Gilbert at Carmel festival: surprised by men in audience. Usually speaks to mostly women10:55 AM Sep 26th from Echofon

·  Wrote first draft of new book Committed, about marriage, "pandering" to readers of Eat Pray Love. It was dreadful, Gilbert said10:57 AM Sep 26th from Echofon

·  "I had become weird, plasticized version of my own voice." trashed it , spent 6 months gardening in New Jersey10:59 AM Sep 26th from Echofon

    

·  When winter came, so did new voice and first sentence: in autumn of 2006, I found myself traveling through the mountains of North Vietnam ..11:01 AM Sep 26th from Echofon

·  "with a man who had yet to become my husband.". Gilbert found her voice and wrote entirely new book. Great crowd pleaser.11:02 AM Sep 26th from Echofon

    

That about sums ups Gilbert’s talk. In her case, it was more authors than ideas.

Carl Hiassen flew in to Carmel on Thursday so he could play the Cypress golf course on Friday before his talk. I asked him how an author like him (many best sellers) chooses which festivals to attend. He said he had met Jim McGillen at Sun Valley the previous year and liked him. An offer to play one of the world’s top golf course sweetened the deal.

A few wonderful surprises:

Mexican cellist Carlos Prieto giving a moving history of his cello, which was built by Stradivarius in the 17^th century. His Spanish accent made the tale even more beguiling. And after he played a piece by Bach, everyone in the audience knew they had to buy his book.

Shana Mahaffey, whose new book, Sounds Like Crazy, hadn’t even officially been released yet. She gave a moving talk about the influence her grandfather had over her and how he helped her finish the book. (Unfortunately he died before he could see the finished product.)

Reza Aslan’s description of what Iran feels: it sees US troops in every country on its borders and a military superpower talking about “regime change” for Iran for 30 years. In short, Iran feels under attack and unless the U.S. recognizes its vantage point, talks and sanctions will be useless. An attack will make everything worse in the Middle East.

Shelby Steele, who rose to prominence in part because of the novelty of an African-American being a conservative, did not say a single thing I agreed with. He said liberals had given conservatives a bad name by making fun of them. (Isn’t this what people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have done to liberals?) He said that political correctness is so strict in the US that now when people criticize Obama they are accused of being racist. (I think he is confusing the idea that the birthers who question where Obama was born are considered racist, not all critics.) But as much of the audience at the festival were older and probably somewhat conservative, his remarks went over well.

PJ O’Rourke said he was very happy to have been invited to a book festival. He dreads the day he is invited to a Twitter festival. (Although he conceded it might be mercifully short.)

I had never heard of Richard Lederer, who is well known for his Anguished English series. He has just written two books, one about dogs and one about cats. (I guess he saw that Marley & Me had made a mint.) This man is funny and can spin words like a master. Now that he has written about a man’s best friend, I bet he is going to become extremely well-known.

Michael Krasny can tell some very funny Jewish jokes.

Cara Black makes you want to hop the next plane for Paris to wander the back streets of the city like her character Aimee Leduc.

The Lasting Impact of Ramparts Magazine

   It’s hard to imagine today, when newspapers, magazines and blogs are full of articles about the malfeasance of government, that there was a time when nobody spoke about the dark side of the CIA or the secret spy networks of the FBI.

All that changed in the 1960s with Ramparts Magazine.

For those who don’t remember, Ramparts was a slickly produced magazine of the left and a publication that took no prisoners. Started in Menlo Park as a Catholic literary quarterly in 1962, Ramparts evolved into one of the most important periodicals of the New Left. The magazine exposed the close relationship of universities with the American war machine, revealed the ugly truth behind the Vietnam War, and trumpeted the power of a new protest group called the Black Panthers.

    And it all happened in the Bay Area.

Now Peter Richardson, an editor at PoliPoint Press in Marin and a lecturer on California Studies at San Francisco State has written the definitive history of the brightly-shining but short-lived magazine. A Bomb in Every Issue is a long overdue look at this important periodical, and it’s mighty entertaining as well.

    It turns out that the Bay Area was critical to Ramparts’ success because the region served as a cross roads for sophisticated marketing, radical culture, smart, aspiring writers, and a willingness to break traditional social conventions. Take the Free Speech and anti-Vietnam movements in Berkeley, the Black Panthers in Oakland and the Summer of Love in San Francisco and you have an explosive mix of rage and energy.

    Into this heady brew came a group of outsized characters, many of whom have become important historical figures in their own right. Ramparts was started by Edward Keating, a Stanford-educated lawyer and Catholic convert who recruited Thomas Merton and John Howard Griffin, the author of the seminal Black Like Me, to write for him.

    Keating eventually hired Warren Hinckle to do publicity for the magazine, and Hinckle soon stepped up as editor and moved the periodical to San Francisco. With his eye patch, large girth, hard-drinking ways, as well as flair for attracting attention to his projects, Hinckle transformed the magazine. Ramparts became a well-produced, eye-catching glossy that said “Read Me” all over it instead of “This-is-just-another-boring-radical-rant-on-newsprint.”
   
    Hinckle’s smartest move was to hire Robert Scheer as a writer. Scheer was then a struggling graduate student at Berkeley and Richardson writes some amusing anecdotes of the scrapes he got into. (Including the time he rode in his motorcycle across the Bay Bridge but forgot to secure his master’s thesis. It was his only copy and soon it was scattered all over the freeway. Scheer never did get that degree.) Scheer wrote many of the explosive stories detailing the cloak and dagger work of the CIA.




    I was really surprised to discover that Eldridge Cleaver rose to prominence because of his work at Ramparts. Keating printed some of his prison writings and even helped Cleaver get out of jail. After working for Ramparts for a time, Cleaver joined the Black Panthers and became internationally known.

    Richardson’s book is full of other tidbits. Hunter Thompson wrote for the magazine, as did Howard Zinn, Norm Chomsky, Susan Sontag, and Tom Hayden. Ralph Steadman provided illustrations. Jann Wenner worked at the magazine and then left to form Rolling Stone. Adam Hochschild worked there, too, and later founded Mother Jones. David Horowitz, today considered a major neo-con, started out as a radical writer at Ramparts.

“What really distinguished Ramparts from other publications was its ability to compel bigger news organizations, especially the New York Times, to pick up its stories,” Richardson told Andy Ross on his Ask the Agent blog. “All told, the Times covered about a half dozen Ramparts stories on its front page: for example, when Ramparts revealed that the CIA was secretly funding the National Student Association. And during the late sixties and early seventies, Time magazine ran about ten stories about Ramparts, mostly to disparage it.  But all those stories did was raise Ramparts’ profile.”


All those strong personalities had strong egos, which invariably clashed. First Keating, then Hinckle, and then Scheer got ousted. The money started to trickle away. Ramparts reverted to newsprint, but even then attracted strong writers such as Angela Davis, Seymour Hersh, Alexander Cockburn, Jonathan Kozol and Kurt Vonnegut. Finally, after other muckracking institutions, including CBS’ 60 Minutes came on the scene, Ramparts started a steep decline and folded in 1975.

This is not a love letter to the left. Richardson raises some very serious questions in the book about the activities of the Black Panthers and local politicians. In 1974, Elaine Brown, the leader of the Panthers hired Betty Van Patter, an accountant, to help with the organization’s books. Van Patter apparently started to ask some hard questions about the Panthers’ money. She disappeared in December 1974 and her body was found on a beach a few weeks later.

    Richardson discusses how misinformation about Van Patter was spread and how many officials preferred to look the other way. In particular, he singles out the reaction of Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who wrote in her own book that Van Patter had a prison record (not true) and disappeared with a large sum of money six weeks before police found her body. Lee suggests that the accusations of her death by the Black Panthers are just anti-left propaganda. It’s a sobering reminder of the toll that period did take.

Richardson has planned a series of readings and talks that should be a wonderful and thoughtful romp through the radical 1960s. He will be speaking with Robert Scheer on Thursday September 24 at 7:30 pm and Berkeley Arts & Letters; at Book Passage with Norman Solomon and Reese Ehrlich at 7 pm on Friday Sept. 25, and at the Huntington-USC Institute for the study of California and the West on Oct.6. His complete schedule is here.

Twitter + Jewish Mother + Twitteleh

BayNewser posted this You Tube video about the only person who really cares about your tweets: your Jewish mother. It's hilarious.

New Book Review Comes to the Bay Area

A year after two Sacramento book lovers, one with a dubious past, launched the Sacramento Book Review, the duo has released something called The San Francisco Book Review.

It’s a free, 32-page tabloid newspaper stuffed with 150 short reviews of everything from literary novels to teen fiction to crafts and hobbies. I picked up a copy Sunday at A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland. The paper will be available in local bookstores, libraries and coffee shops.

The review is put together by Heidi Komlofske and Ross Rojeck, who served four years in prison for mail fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme to sell phony terrorist-tracking technology. He once also owned the largest chain of comic book stores in the country, Comics and Comix. He was released from prison in 2008.

Rojeck pissed a lot of people off, and the web is full of blog posts about his once-large role in the comic book world and people’s anger over his bad side. It looks like time in jail enhanced his appreciation for books, according to this interview with Rojeck by Rich Johnson, of the website Bleeding Cool.

According to Rojeck: “I had been the librarian at two different prison camps, and in trying to find enough new books to keep me busy I ended up reading a number of different book reviews and review sections. From there I started drafting my “dream” book review that would be helpful to me in my situation.

When my friend was unable to follow through with the book review, Heidi stepped up and offered to create and produce the paper. We got my parole officer to approve it, and as Heidi’s employee, a portion of every paycheck goes to my restitution.:

The reviews range from well written to amateur, but the paper does provide another outlet to find out about books. One strange aspect to the review, however: Publishers can pay a fee to expedite a review of a book. For $99 dollars a publisher can expect a review up on the website in 9 to 12 weeks. For $299, that review will go up in 2 to 4 weeks. The pay-for-a-review aspect shows that this is really a more amateur than professional operation.

But the first issue reviews some really fine books, such as The Puzzle King by Betsy Carter, The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliot, The Devil's Tickets by Gary Pomerantz, and more.

Another Bay Area tidbit:


Tonight, Monday Sept. 21, is the premiere of the new CBS television series,  Accidentally on Purpose, based on the memoir written by Bay Area writer Mary Pols. It stars Jenna Elfman and has garnered mixed reviews. You should have no hesitation, however, to read Pols' delightful book, now out in paperback.

The Reasons for My Absence

I know, I know, it’s been more than a month since I posted, which is an eon in blog time. Even my brother Steven, who only reads Ghost Word when he’s finished reading everything else in sight, including the cereal boxes on the breakfast table, asked why I was missing in action.

Lots of reasons.

What Lengths Would You Go for a Book? Would You Steal?

John Gilkey has an aspiration for his life: to own a first edition of every book on Modern Library’s list of Top 100 novels.

The trouble is that Gilkey has no intention of buying any of these books, which include writings by authors F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabakov, Virginia Woolf, and more.

Instead, he has tried to acquire them in another way: through theft. It’s a journey that has let Gilkey “own” many modern masterpieces – but has also sent him to jail for extended periods of time.

In her fascinating new book, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective and a World of Literary Obsession, San Francisco writer Allison Hoover Bartlett has told the tale of unrepentant book thief John Gilkey and the rare book dealer who chased him down. The cat-and-mouse game is played out against the backdrop of antiquarian book fairs in San Francisco and New York, featuring manuscripts worth thousands of dollars and book collectors who will go to any length to possess a particular tome.

Bestselling author Erik Larson characterized Bartlett’s book as “compelling.” Novelist Larry McMurtry called it “a fine read.”

I concur. I gobbled up the book in less than 48 hours, swept away by Bartlett’s taut narrative that has book dealer Ken Saunders chasing an elusive Gilkey, who grew up in Modesto, and who has a sketchy work history but a stunning criminal resume.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much will be published Sept. 17, but I have five galleys to give away. Just email me at FDinkelspiel@gmail.com if you are interested in the book. Tell me a bit about your favorite book to help me choose the winners.

In one riveting scene, Bartlett describes standing outside 49 Geary Street in San Francisco with Gilkey on a bright September morning in 2005 as he explained his philosophy of “book collecting” to her. The building was once the West Coast headquarters of Western Union, but it now houses more than 20 art galleries as well as three antiquarian book stores. Gilkey has filched a copy of The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy from one of the stores, Brick Row Book Shop, and wanted to give Bartlett a tour, almost as if he was the proud owner of this store.

“I was still wary, but too curious to walk away from an opportunity to see Gilkey in his element,” writes Bartlett. “What sort of person returns to the scene of his crime?”

What kind of person does that? Part of what makes The Man Who Loved Books Too Much so fascinating is how Bartlett tries to get inside Gilkey’s mind to understand what drives him to steal rare books – which he generally doesn’t read – and how he feels absolutely no guilt about his crimes.

Read it yourself to find out more.

Finally, some good booksore news

Berkeley is about to get a new general interest bookstore.

Books, Inc announced Aug. 5 that it will open its twelfth branch on Fourth Street in Berkeley in mid-October. The new 4,000 square foot store will carry lots of fiction, children's titles, and cookbooks for all the foodies wandering the street. (Unfortunately the news came at the same time that chef Christopher Lee announced he would be closing Eccolo, the Fourth Street restaurant that was so instrumental in helping Novella Carpenter, the author of Farm City, feed her pigs)

Michael Tucker, the CEO, said the new store is at “right location, the right lease and the right landlord for allowing expansion in this challenging economic climate.”

It will be interesting to see if Books, Inc can be successful on a street that was not profitable for the venerable Cody’s Books, which shuttered its Fourth Street outlet in early 2008.

The independent bookstore chain has roots reaching back to the Gold Rush.

Tidbits from the Squaw valley Community of Writers Conference

So I am up at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Conference, the land of so many dreams. This is the place were aspiring writers come to workshop their short stories, novel excerpts and essay. They listen to the encouraging/discouraging words of editors, publishers, agents and other writers. Some of the big names this year include Michael Pietsch, publisher of Little Brown, Jack Shoemaker, longtime publishers of many imprints, authors Amy Tan, Dorothy Allison, Diane Johnson, Lynn Freed, Janet Fitch, Mark Childress, Jason Roberts, Rick Wartzman, Molly Gilles, and many more.

A few things heard or overheard:

On the demise of book criticism and book reviews, from author Alan Cheuse (after he lambasted the Washington Post for shutting down its stand along book review section) “We’re in a horrendous moment for American writers. It is so difficult to get attention for a book for someone who doesn’t have name recognition … and even for people with name recognition”

Lynn Freed: Most book reviews are book reports and are boring. She wants reviews to have opinions, to put books in broader context of writer’s work as well as the work of other authors. She and others agreed that reviewers are often writers and are reluctant to criticize one another's work.

(At which point I thought to myself: try doing all that contextual work when some places only pay $50 for a review)

The panel was short of discussion on the on-line chatter about books. In fact, the entire conference is missing a vibrant dialogue about the future of books, ebooks, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. It is a conference that really focuses on writing rather than publishing.

On the agents panel: Susan Golomb, Peter Steinberg, Leslie Daniels

Golomb: Unfortunately publishers are now asking about an author’s platform, which they expect to be as high as a skyscraper, even when it is a debut novel.

Steinberg: It’s hard to give an average advance. They range from $1,000 to $5 million.

A participant asked what the agents thought of the online personality of Ms. Snark. None of them had heard of her. (I informed the questioner that it was agent Janet Reid)

Overheard: A woman came back from her one-on-one with a staff person complaining that the staff person asked what her vision of the book should be. After the participant talked a bit, the staff person said they only had 5 more minutes of the conference and they would have to wrap things up. The participant didn’t feel like she got any critique.

Also overheard: staff writer talking with someone whose manuscript he had critiques that day in class and setting up an extra session to discuss it with her.

Dorothy Allison read an except from a story that is out in the summer issue of Tin House. It concerned a young man named Jason who dreams of fame. Allison has lived in west Sonoma County on and off for ten years and says she is just now publishing stories about the area. This may be because Allison often writes as many as 18 drafts of a story.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and Towers of Gold

If you live in the Bay Area, or are a bluegrass fan, you have certainly heard of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, the 3-day free music festival that financier Warren Hellman puts on in Golden Gate Park.

Between 500,000 and 750,000 people come each year to bask in the sun (or fog) and listen to fantastic music. Emmylou Harris, Hazel Dickens, Steve Earle, Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, Gillian Welch, and many more are regulars.

This year Marianne Faithful and Lyle Lovett will join around 75 other musical guests.

Well, the festival keeps growing, and Warren Hellman and Dawn Holliday, who organizes the festival, decided to add a sixth stage to the event. And guess what they are going to call it? (Hint:Warren is my cousin.)

Towers of Gold .... after my book of the same name.

When Warren told me this I couldn't believe it. I know he got some flack because the other stages have simpler, folksy names like Arrow and Banjo stage. But when I published the book, Warren and I vowed to have fun together with the project. (He encouraged me to write it, since it is about our mutual ancestor, Isaias Hellman.) We were on the radio together on Michael Krasny's show on KQED. He wrote a song about Isaias, which he plays with his band. The Wronglers, and which I promote on my website. I dedicated the book to him.

So you see, it's been a lot of fun and he decided to continue the fun by honoring Isaias Hellman at the festival. The graphic and banner for the stage is above. That is Isaias Hellman on the coins.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Leah Garchick wrote about this and this is what she said:

"The term refers to Hellman during the bank panic of 1893, taking his money from San Francisco to Los Angeles, piling it on a counter - in stacks of gold - and opening an institution that was ancestor to today's Wells Fargo.The term refers to Hellman during the bank panic of 1893, taking his money from San Francisco to Los Angeles, piling it on a counter - in stacks of gold - and opening an institution that was ancestor to today's Wells Fargo."

I am so delighted by this. I love HSB and usually go for at least 2 of the 3 days. Now the concert will resonate with me even more deeply.

Squaw Valley Community of Writers

I am heading back to Lake Tahoe tomorrow to do a bookstore book signing and a few appearances at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

The Community of Writers has a nice tradition: it invites alumni who have published books to come back and read. It's a way to showcase the work of people who have gone through the writing program and also show those still aspiring to publish that it can be done. The organizer of the conference, Brett Hall Jones, tries to make sure there is a good turnout by offering free food.

I will be talking at 1:15 pm Wednesday at the Olympic Village Inn along with others alums, including Tanya Egan Gibson, Jamie Lee Ford, Vicki Forman, and David Bajo.

On Thursday at 2 pm, I will be on a panel called Using Historical Record to Create Scene, with Jason Roberts, Glen David Gould, and Sandra Scofield. Rick Wartzman will moderate.

As soon as I finish that panel, I will rush to Bookshelf at the Boatworks, the last independent bookstore in Tahoe City. I will be doing a signing there at 4 pm.

I have been attending the Squaw Valley Community of Writers on and off, as a participant and as a visitor, since 2003. It's a wonderful workshop and a wonderful organization. I always feel that its philosophy is to connect accomplished writers with aspiring writers and to show that they are the same .... just at different places on a continuum. Before I published, I found this attitude encouraging and inspiring.

Bay Area Literary Tidbits

The New York Times featured a profile of Oakland writer Melanie Gideon, whose memoir, The Slippery Year, will be published by Knopf next week.

The title of the article: Car-Pool Epiphanies: A Memoir About the Ordinary, says a lot about the book. “Melanie Gideon does not have a story of divorce, death or abuse to tell. Nor does she write of recovery from cancer, drug addiction or even a miserable childhood,” says the article.

“This really is a book about nothing,” confirms Gideon, who is a write at San Francisco’s Writer’s Grotto.

Well, I have read the book, and while it is true the most dramatic plot element involved Gideon driving five hours to spy on her son while he is at sleep-away camp (either to make sure he is okay or just because she misses him so much) the book really is about finding happiness in ordinary life.

And her first chapter, when her husband buys a deluxe motor home, was so funny that I burst into laughter a half a dozen times.

Gideon will be at A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland on August 12 as well at some other venues in the Bay Area.



Another Bay Area writer, Kathryn Ma, is getting lots of advance praise for her linked collection of stories, All That Work and Still No Boys.

Curtis Sittenfeld, the author of Prep and An American Wife, listed Ma’s book as one of her favorite five books on The Daily Beast. Sittenfeld even went so far as to predict that Ma would win the Pulitzer Prize for her work. (She also praises the work of Jennie Capo Crucet. Sittenfled selected both authors to win an Iowa fiction prize.)

“When Crucet and Ma become really famous and win Pulitzers, I plan to pretend I discovered them,” writes Sittenfeld.

In another contest, Stephen Elliot, the Grotto dweller, founder of The Rumpus, founder of The Progressive Reading Series, author of seven books, and self-declared masochist and wild man, was voted the Bay Area’s favorite writer.

Recent book sales by Bay Area authors, via Publishers Marketplace:

Sister Madonna Buder and Karin Evans's IRON SPIRIT: The Wisdom and Inspiration of Sister Madonna Buder, World Champion Triathlete, about the 79-year-old nun and Ironman competitor known on the circuit as the Iron Nun, to Marysue Rucci at Simon & Schuster, in a good deal, at auction, by Elisabeth Weed at Weed Literary.

Radio show host, magazine writer and frequent contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle Tony DuShane's CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE JESUS JERK, loosely based on his experience growing up a Jehovah's Witness, to Anne Horowitz at Soft Skull, by Mollie Glick of Foundry Literary + Media.

Journalist (formerly with the SF Chronicle) and author Steven Winn's COME BACK, COMO: Winning the Heart of a Reluctant Dog, to Carole Tonkinson at Harper UK, by Juliette Shapland at Harper, on behalf of the Amy Rennert Agency. (Foreign rights have also been sold to France, Holland, Poland and China)

Thomas Peele's KILLING THE MESSENGER: the Assassination of Chauncey Bailey and the Ruination of an American City, a chilling story of murder, journalism, politics and intrigue that investigates the brutal slaying of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey, who was gunned down in 2007 for writing a story about Your Black Muslim Bakery, the business front of a violent polygamist cult, to Jenna Ciongoli at Broadway, in a pre-empt, for publication in Fall 2011, by Elizabeth Evans at Reece Halsey New York (NA).

Julie and Julia -- Do Two Books Make One Movie?

I got to go to a sneak preview of the movie Julie & Julia Tuesday July 28, starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julie Powell.

One of these characters is famous. One probably never will be, but provided the stimulus for the movie.

In 2002, a young Julie Powell, facing 30 and stuck in a tough administrative job helping families whose loved ones died in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, decided to write a blog. She cooked her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the course of a year. The blog was popular, but became a phenomenon after Amanda Hesser (who plays herself in the movie) published a story on Powell in the New York Times. Suddenly, Powell was a somebody, and was deluged with requests for interviews and calls from literary agents and editors asking her if she had ever considered writing a book about her experiences.

Her book came out in 2005 and was a hit. Julia Child's memoir about her life in France came out in 2006 and was a hit. Hit filmmaker Nora Ephron put them together for the movie Julie & Julia, which will come out August 7.

The movie is charming and fun and will make you hungry since the food all looks so good. (The New York Times even ran an article about the food stylist.) Plan on going out to dinner after you see it, and plan to find a French restaurant.

The movie should do wonders for the sales of Powell's and Child's books, as well as for the sales of The Tenth Muse, a memoir by editor Judith Jones, who published Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Jones is a character in the movie.

Meryl Streep, of course, is fabulous. She should win yet another Academy Award for her portrayl.

Julie Powell has already been written about extensively. She is quite a character: she swears profusely, she has sold her eggs to pay off her credit card debt, she cheated on her husband, Eric, while writing her second memoir about learning to cut up meat; she was dismissed curtly by Julia Child in various interviews, and more. All of this is great fodder for her literary work.

I think this is one of those case where two books make one delightful movie.