Writing Life

Memories change through the years, and who’s to say that the earliest versions are always the most accurate? Take, for instance, the case of writer Willie Morris. In his 1995 memoir, “My Dog Skip,” Morris recycles a lot of the anecdotes that appeared in an earlier memoir, “North Toward Home,” published in 1967. In “My Dog Skip,” Morris writes about a time when, at the age of twelve or so, he and a buddy contrived to terrify a little boy named John Abner Reeves in a Yazoo City, Mississippi, graveyard. Earlier in the day Morris had given John Abner a quarter in exchange for the latter’s promise that he would walk through the graveyard at exactly nine o’clock that night. Before the appointed hour, Morris, his dog Skip, and the buddy arrive at the graveyard and hide behind some bushes. Later, as John Abner is passing their hiding place, Morris blasts a loud and terrifying note on his trumpet while his buddy simulates the appearance of a ghost by raising up a long stick over which a large white pillowcase has been hung. The most elaborate part of the prank involves Skip. As a terrified John Abner races toward the graveyard’s exit, Morris attaches a cardboard replica of a human skeleton to Skip’s back and instructs the dog to chase poor John Abner out to the street. This final element of the anecdote struck me as false and cartoonish. I double checked it with “North Toward Home” and discovered that, although in most respects the 1967 anecdote matches the 1995 version nearly word-for-word, the 1967 anecdote contains no mention whatsoever of either Skip or the cardboard skeleton. In fact, the graveyard anecdote is described on page 35 of my edition of “North Toward Home,” and Skip doesn’t enter Morris’ life until page 67. I suspect that Morris was so fond of the graveyard anecdote that he decided to give Skip a role in it so that he could justify including it in “My Dog Skip,” where it otherwise might have seemed gratuitous. How else to explain such an inconsistency from an author who claimed, in yet another memoir, “I have always taken no inconsiderable pride in my recollection for detail…”? In this instance, it is the earlier version of the tale that seems the most authentic. Read the rest of this entry »

My wife is into horses. She practically grew up on horseback. She doesn’t own a horse anymore, but she still loves them. Sadly, most of the horses she sees these days are in movies or on TV. Sometimes, as we are leaving a movie theater, she’ll say, “Wasn’t that horse beautiful?” And then I will rack my brain in an effort to recall when it was that a horse appeared on screen. Usually I fail at this, and then I have to ask her, “What horse?” And she’ll say something like, “When Patrick Dempsey and Amy Adams were walking in the park. There was a police horse behind them in the distance. It was really lovely.” Naturally, I never saw the police horse because, like nearly everyone else in the theater, I was watching Patrick Dempsey and Amy Adams (in truth, I was probably only watching Amy Adams, but that’s another story). I am tempted to make fun of my wife for this behavior of hers, but I can’t. Because I do it too – not with horses, but with globes. Read the rest of this entry »

On January 20 I wrote about a handwritten travel journal I had purchased a few days earlier at an antiques faire. The journal was kept by an American woman as she traveled from her home in Honolulu to various ports in Japan, China, and the Philippines. The woman doesn’t reveal her own name in the journal, but for the sake of convenience I dubbed her “Hattie.” The journal begins on June 26, 1922, as Hattie departs Honolulu aboard a Japanese ship called the Korea Maru. It concludes on September 3, as she is steaming homeward aboard the Shinyo Maru.

On July 27, 1922, Hattie boarded a luxury liner called the Empress of Canada. She described it as, “a floating palace, the most beautiful boat I ever expect to see. It is a British boat and said to be the largest on the Pacific.” She boarded the boat at Macao. It took her to various ports in both China and Japan. At about the time she boarded the boat, a new word began appearing in her journal. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I read The Worst Journey In The World, a first-person account of explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s fatal last expedition to the Antarctic. The book was written by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of only a handful of men to survive the expedition. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was 23 or 24 I worked as a janitor at the U.C. Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. My boss was an elderly African-American named Mr. Keyes. He was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Muhammad Ali’s birthplace, and he spoke with a sort of singsong cadence that resembled Ali’s. He had none of Ali’s outward swagger. He was a quiet and introspective man. But in some ways he resembled another Mr. Keyes – i.e., Barton Keyes, the insurance investigator portrayed by Edward G. Robinson in the film Double Indemnity. Read the rest of this entry »

Because I am cheap, I usually give my wife a poem for Valentine’s Day, rather than chocolates or flowers. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year, as Valentine’s Day approaches, Hollywood studios generally release a spate of romantic movies. In recent weeks we’ve seen the release of Leap Year, When In Rome, Dear John, and, today, Valentine’s Day. I love Valentine’s Day (February 14th, that is, not the new Garry Marshall film, which I haven’t seen yet) and I love romantic movies, especially romantic comedies. I don’t own a Hollywood studio, so I cannot present you with a romantic film for Valentine’s Day. But I do own a word processor, and so today I sketched out the synopsis of an extremely silly romantic comedy. I hope you like it. But be warned: If it really were a movie, it would carry an R rating. Read the rest of this entry »

I saw a movie the other night in which a convenience store gets held up. When a gun was pointed in his face, the store clerk emptied out the cash register and handed over the money as if he had rehearsed this particular scenario many times. All the customers handed their wallets over to the gunman in a peaceful and orderly fashion. The sight of a deadly weapon being waved in the air seemed to make everyone instantly cooperative. It’s always like that in the movies. Real life isn’t quite so predictable. Read the rest of this entry »

Two years ago this week, on February 7, 2008, I delivered a commentary on a National Public Radio program called Marketplace. The subject of the commentary was my fear that my wife and I might soon lose our house to foreclosure. A downturn in the local real-estate market had pretty much eliminated my income as a notary public and had also reduced the salary Julie earns as an escrow officer. At that time, foreclosure was not a foregone conclusion but just a frightening possibility. By October of 2008, however, we were no longer able to make our mortgage payments. We requested loan modifications from our lenders, but our requests were denied. By the beginning of 2009 we were actively looking for a rental home to move into should the sword of foreclosure finally sever us from our home. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year in February Julie and I get a catalog from The Teaching Company, a firm that sells entire sets of university lectures on CDs and DVDs. Ordinarily, these lectures sell for hundreds of dollars. For years I have coveted the company’s lectures on Dante’s Divine Comedy, but the cost of the DVD set is $255. Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition has also tempted me, but the cost of the DVDs, which contain 42 hours of instruction, is a whopping $750. And then there is The Teaching Company’s collection of 52 half-hour lectures on Shakespeare’s works. This set normally retails for $630. All of these prices are a bit too steep for us. Julie and I know several married couples who have purchased DVDs from The Teaching Company and have enjoyed them immensely. Our friends Norm and Karen learned all about the masterpieces of Renaissance art with the help of some Teaching Company DVDs. Our friends Darrell and Elizabeth have purchased and enjoyed several lecture series about classical music that have helped deepen their appreciation of the works of composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin. Julie and I, being cheapskates, have never purchased a single one of The Teaching Company’s “Great Courses.” But every February we come close, because in February, many of the Great Courses are offered at a deep discount. The Shakespeare lectures, for instance, are available this month for only $135. That’s a savings of nearly $500! The Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition DVDs are available this month for only $165. That’s a savings of $585! When we see discount prices like that, we both vow that this will be the year that we quit entertaining ourselves with formulaic Hollywood films via NetFlix two or three times a week and begin supplementing our meager formal educations with a set of lectures from The Teaching Company. Why watch Hank Azaria portray a bogus Egyptian Pharoah in Night at the Museum II: The Battle of the Smithsonian when we could be watching a university professor lecture about real Egyptian Pharoahs on a Teaching Company DVD? Read the rest of this entry »