Happy birthday, Walt Whitman

The impalpable sustenance of me from all things, at all hours of the day;
The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme—myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated, yet part of the scheme:
The similitudes of the past, and those of the future;
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings—on the walk in the street, and the passage over the river;
The current rushing so swiftly, and swimming with me far away;
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them;
The certainty of others—the life, love, sight, hearing of others.
Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to shore;
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide;
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east;
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high;
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring in of the flood-tide, the falling back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

-From "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

Who else had major travel lust after reading the Times books essay "Read My Book? Tour My House"? I felt so lazy -- I haven't even sought out Whitman's place in Brooklyn Heights, let alone his house in Camden! Let's all go sleep over in Agatha Christie's house!

Well, let's not. But here's my contribution: We didn't stop in but this weekend I drove past the former site of the cottage where Ken Kesey wrote ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, also appearing in Tom Wolfe's THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST. (A few of them are still standing, although I believe Kesey's is not.) Have you ever gone out of your way to see a writer's house or landmark? One I've never been to but am dying to visit is Edith Wharton's mansion in Lenox, Massachusetts -- maybe next spring.

Loved that video of Bill Murray reading poetry to construction workers? He can read to you at the Poetry Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge next Monday. Galway Kinnell, Poet Laureate of Brooklyn Tina Chang and Laurie Anderson will also read at this mobile benefit -- all for the low, low price of $250.

You might think anyone can just walk up, but my friend P. and I wandered into it by accident two summers ago on our way to the Telectroscope and they hurry you along.

In other news, for this summer only I will stand outside your apartment and read you poetry for $1.* A bargain at twice the price!

--
* May not include travel expenses for recipients outside the tri-state area. Also if you could lower me down an iced coffee at the end, that would be swell.

Post-Its: Better than direct mail from John Grisham

I received a charity letter "from" John Grisham on behalf of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the mail while I was gone. Putting "Author" as part of your return address is a great way to get me to open your unsolicited mail; thank goodness spammers haven't caught on. (J.M. Coetzee wants to help me with the ladies? Sweet.)

• Because a lot of people are winding up here looking for it, my Frank McCourt note from a few weeks ago has been updated with public memorial information, as current as I could find. Not afraid to be servicey!
  


• My copy of LOLITA which I admitted to re-purchasing several months ago has still not turned up. I think it either has been lent out for a long time or got mixed in with another family member's books. I may even have been the forgetful lender; that's where my copy of THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY was all this time, on the nightstand of the West Coast bureau (who has since finished it). Meanwhile, another book has pulled a disappearing act when I most wanted it, which is why you're not currently getting "Incomprehensible Notes From My Adolescent Copy of LEAVES OF GRASS."



• This Times article on how serendipity is becoming extinct has so many techspletives in it it's practically unreadable. But I'm posting it because "serendipity" is one of my favorite words, and I see no reason that we have to let the concept or the term go. Now get off my lawn.


• "If Nora Ephron had been born buxom, what else besides that article might she not have written?" I'm just catching up to Ariel Levy's profile of Nora Ephron in the New Yorker from a few weeks ago, whose second paragraph can only be described as an equal-opportunity offender for the ladies, but if you can make it past that there are some nifty tidbits about her life as a writer. Related: Tina Fey's forthcoming book (!!!) was described at deal time as being "in the style of Nora Ephron."
  


• INFINITE JEST corner: What the hell do you say when people unfamiliar with the book ask what it's about? This has happened to me several times and my latest answer was the best, but I feel as if I owe people more than a shrug and a smile. (Let us not speak of the back-cover copy, which is atrocious.) My latest answer incorporated the current situations of the various Incandenzas and, since I passed Interdependence Day a while back, a smidge of the alternate-reality politics going on behind them. The last thing I want to do is deter anyone from reading it, which a vague answer or an "It's extremely complicated" might.


• Finally, shamelessly, self-promotionally: The AV Club's latest Wrapped Up in Books round begins Aug. 17 on John Crowley's LITTLE, BIG. That's two weeks from now. It is possible that you have not started the book yet, and I am not judging you, promise. But now would be a good time to start it!

And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

Thoughts while reading the Brooklyn Paper's slate of nominees for Brooklyn poet laureate:

1. Who the heck are these people besides They Might Be Giants? I don't follow poetry with anything resembling diligence, but I was hoping at least one of them would ring a bell.

2. I can't decide whether I'm surprised or not that Brooklyn has a poet laureate, and I mean that in the best way possible. Why shouldn't every city have a poet laureate? Never hurt anybody, and if you can find evidence contravening that, I'm sure it will be hilarious.

3. Still, TMBG vs. "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"? Two men and a poem enter, one poem leaves.