Funny Girl (5*)

 

Nick Hornby believes bingeing shouldn't be limited to streaming content.  He certainly delivers here.  I couldn't put down his funny and achingly perceptive novel about the joys of working with smart, talented people you love, particularly when you're starting out in the Swinging Sixties.  A young woman's road from the sticks to accidental but instant stardom at the BBC drives an often told story but this one also delineates the contrasting perspectives and lifestyles of two gay writers who adore her.  For good measure Hornby also makes early fame every bit as fun and exciting as you expect it to be.  Delightful. 

 

Penultimate

It means next to last.  We decided not to renew the lease at 492 Tarpon which means our share house finally will come to an end despite the lure of sunsets like these.

Tropical Storm Henri didn't leave us a lot of time to get sentimental.  I swam in the bay on Saturday morning after a voluntary evacuation order had been issued.  Randy recorded the essential difference between two of his housemates.

Thom, Randy & Varick caught the 7:45 p.m. ferry after early crab cakes.  I'll miss Varick's cooking, that's for sure.

The skies cleared late Monday afternoon, with enough time for a walk on the beach. Braving the rough surf was easier than actually catching a wave.

I poured a leftover Cosmo upon returning to the house.  Drinkin' alone is a bitch!

The house still looks great in these shots, but now that quarter shares are what one longtime real estate agent calls the "coin of the realm," as many as 28 people a month fill--and damage--it. And like most landlords, ours prioritizes rental income over maintenance. That white umbrella is ripped to shreds, as are the door and window screens, giving flies and mosquitoes free rein to say nothing of the plague of ants in the kitchen. Partying tenants have reduced the number of functional chaise lounges from eight to three.  The mildewed deck furniture sags. And garbage collection is a nightmare. No bueno, at least not at a cost of $22,500 for five weeks, our "discounted" rate.

Thom returned early Tuesday.  He mixed a fresh batch of Cosmos. We drank them in a new spot, just above the bulkhead.

I took what likely will be my final walk to the Sunken Forest via the Grove on what may have been the sunniest, hottest day of the summer.

After a sunset overdose, we relocated our cocktails and deviled eggs to the beach. "There won't be any more evenings like this," I said wistfully.

We're leaving the Pines to younger bucks.

Tyll (4*)

Odd to read a second historical novel about pre-Enlightenment Europe, this one a kind of origin story for a German fairy tale character set against the very sobering backdrop of the Thirty Years War.  And like As Meat Loves Salt, Tyll left me counting my lucky stars that I was born in the mid-twentieth century.  Imagine a world dominated by superstition, brute force and zero opportunity for advancement unless you're a clever, talented boy who tightrope walks, juggles and snaps at royals.  Kehlmann brilliantly tells his story from multiple perspectives (Tyll himself, a deposed queen, a scholar, a court lackey and more, all perfectly drawn) on a fractured timeline that demands the reader's full attention.

It's hard to believe that a German could write something as amusing as this in the voice of the Scottish-born former Queen of Bohemia (who sent me to Wikipedia to explain the meaning of electoral palatinate, a critical and still somewhat mystifying plot point):

She had missed good theater more than anything else, from the beginning, even more than palatable food. In German lands, real theater was unknown; there, pitiful players roamed through the rain and screamed and hopped and farted and brawled.  This was probably due to the cumbersome language for theater, it was a brew of groans and harsh grunts, it was a language that sounded like someone struggling not to choke, like a cow having a coughing fit, like aa man with beer coming out of his nose.  What was a poet supposed to do with this language.  She had given German literature a try, first that Opitz and then someone else whose name she had forgotten; she could not commit to memory these people who were named Krautbacher or Engelkramer or Kargholzsteingrompl, and when you had grown up with Chaucer, and John Donn had dedicated verses to you--"fair phoenix bride," he had called her, "and from thine wye all lesser birds will take their jollity"--then even with the utmost politeness you could not bring yourself to find any merit in all this German bleating.

Kehlmann also delivers a moving, bravura ending in which this same FIERCE queen asserts her power in a way that has me panting to see Netflix's long-gestating adaptation.  With luck, the series will be more accessible than this very literary novel without sacrificing too much of its unique quality.

Inside the Dream Palace (4*)

 

I didn't need Sherill Tippins to tell me the Chelsea Hotel has been New York City's coolest address for more than a century, but her book puts the iconic building at the center of nearly artistic movement from utopianism to punk.  At times, this structure can be a little tenuous, given their connection to a single hotel "guest" but she's always informative and insightful about the historical context.  In a nicely democratic touch that nods to the founding vision behind the Chelsea, Tippins pays as much attention to the characters as the stars, too, and gives Stanley Bard, the longtime manager, his due as one of the country's greatest--and most long-suffering--supporters of the arts, a job he never knew he really wanted.  

Who Is Maud Dixon? (2*)

 

Alexandra Andrews aces the Bechdel test with this efficiently written, preposterously plotted neo-feminist thriller (two chics wrestle over a gun!) but it left me cold.   Movie fodder at best, but I have my doubts about even that after losing two hours of my life to The Woman in the Window, another unnourishing exercise in a bid for Hollywood attention.

Big Bang (4*)

I can't recall ever getting more pure enjoyment out of reading a book.  Bowman infuses his cunningly imagined, fact-based history of the baby boomer generation (the title nods to the record number of births in a single year, 1957, when 4.3 million Americans burst onto the soon-to-be swinging scene) with an explosion of pop culture and tells it with turns of phrase so deft and amusing that I found myself giggling with delight.

Take this description of the dance craze inspired by Chubby Checker:

In a nutshell, to do the twist, a dancer would duplicate the imaginary action of stubbing out a cigarette with the toe of their shoe while drying off their behind with an imaginary beach towel.  In the late 60s, paparazzi photographs of Jacqueline Kennedy sunbathing nude will reveal that the first lady had a modest posterior. When she twisted in 1962, if she pretended to stub out a cigarette with her toe, it was an L&M. 

Jackie--who as First Lady did everything she could to hide her addiction to nicotine from the public-- figures prominently in the book, as does prettier sister Lee Radzill, who first caught Onassis's eye.  Bowman portrays her as a chain-smoking gossip who cannot abide people who tell her she sounds just like Marilyn Monroe.  It's also impossible not to contrast Jackie's behavior in Dallas on November 22, 1963 with that of Elizabeth Taylor's six year's earlier when she rushes to the scene of the car crash that "Picassofied" (!) friend Monty's face ("Clift drove up into the hills on a road that looked and curled like a fling of white paint on a Jackson Pollock painting").  So  many hot takes, mostly men swinging their dicks, including Norman Mailer (so despicable), Arthur Miller (so obsessed) , Jimi  Hendrix (so talented), William Burroughs (so degenerate), Benjamin Spock (so sexist) & Robert McNamara (so arrogant). Soooooo much fun, sooooo much rushing to Wikipedia.

I learned as much as I laughed.  Everyone knows that Marilyn Monroe sang "Happy Birthday" to JFK but how come Ann-Margret don't get no props for singing to our most philandering Prez on his FINAL birthday?  Perhaps because she flew the coop to elude his Cuomo-like clutches.   And how many people recall that Desi Arnaz went on live television to defend his wife, a registered Commie (absolutely true!):  "The only thing that's red about Lucy is her hair."  Case  closed, America went back to enjoying her antics in a heartbeat because that's who we are, endlessly forgiving of the people we love.  Bowman outs Joseph McCarthy, a revelation for me, perhaps because my tribe has never tried to claim him.  He also explains the Pumpkin Papers, and asks exactly the right question about a boring and inconsequential political scandal with an interesting name.

Bowman, who died young,  is surprisingly aware, too, of his generation's shortcomings (lack of representation and gender bias):

Gringos are like the rooster who believes the sun has risen to hear him crow.

*  *  *  *  *

Even more than Marlon Brando or James dean, Albert Camus, with his perpetual Bogart cigarette hanging off his lip, was the avatar of Caucasian cool.

 

If you're a Baby Boomer, ya gotta read  this book.  Just don't expect to be blown away by the ending in which a pile of oh-shit! coincidences fuels unsubstantiated paranoia, at least to my mind.  In with  a bang, out with a whimper, but one hell of a ride.  Think Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, before the big bang.  Yahoo!

Hooks

"The Pines really knows how to get its hooks in you," observed Chris, who made his first visit since the pandemic.

Varick, when he's not hurling garbage cans at his housemates, makes a big contribution to our house, too.  He mixed French cocktails (vodka, pineapple juice & a splash of Chambord)  . . . 

 

and cooked more than one fabulous meal.

Reclamation of the beach has allowed sculpture to last from one visit to the next.

Sand bikes are becoming more common, too.

I took a selfie in the Enchanted Forest.

The glorious sunset worked its magic on our Scrabble game.  Chris and I both Scrabbled on our first turns.   He won but our combined score (828) was the highest it has been since I began keeping track, more than a hundred games ago.

"Pube" is the only bogus word.  Which is your favorite?

Even after three decades, the natural wonders of the Pines can still surprise.  While swimming in the ocean, maybe 20 yards from the shore, I noticed splashes of water, like huge raindrops, all around even though the skies were only partly cloudy.  Upon emerging, I realized thousands of small fish had been surfacing. There were so many that they actually darkened large lengths of the ocean.  Even more astonishing, I could hear them in between roars of the surf.  As their bodies hit the water, it sounded like very muted applause.  A fly casting fisherman speculated they were mossbunker schools, also called menhaden.  A Google search provided more details about the phenomenon.