My own private Gutenberg

In 1957, my Uncle Bob gave me a Smith Corona Galaxie II Manual Typewriter for my twelfth birthday. It was the best gift I've ever received. It was the most loyal, steadfast companion through my years of struggling to write. Always there, no matter what time of day—pre-dawn, mid-day, early afternoon, late night—ready, willing and able. I would open the clunky metal case, and those white keys were poised, at strict attention, as if to say, "Come on! Go ahead, just pound my keys! That’s what I’m made for!"

And pound those keys I did. I type with two fingers, but I type with a vengeance. I type hard. It’s almost as if I'm furious at those keys. I love typing like that, with gusto, and I believe that’s the way manual typewriters are made to be used. When I strike a typewriter key, I feel a link to Gutenberg and his press. The key you strike in turn activates a slim metal arm, the head of which slaps hard against the page. It makes an impression of a single letter, a dark inky impression. The impressions even bleed slightly; they're inky blossoms.

I typed I don’t know how many thousands of pages on my Galaxie II typewriter through the years. I typed the manuscript of my first book, and I remember holding it lovingly before I sent it off to my agent. It was just 100 pages at the time, eventually grew to be 203, but it was all typed, every single letter, every word, slapped on the page by me and my Galaxie II. I typed essays. I typed poems. I typed stories and laments and so many bad pieces of writing, but even bad writing has a kind of basic dignity to it on the typewriter.  Try it, if you don’t believe me. This very sentence—written heretically on a computer!—would have a rough unique elegance if it were typed. 

                                                                    

My beautiful machine

My typewriter stood up astonishingly well under all the irate and passionate pounding I subjected it to. Strong as an ox. Stronger. But once in a while, something happened. The head of an arm just couldn’t take my abuse anymore and gave up the ghost, tumbling off along with the letter it represented. I’ve seen “P” wounded gravely. I’ve seen “S” die. I’ve even seen “!” get very ill. When that happened, I took my Smith Corona to a typewriter repair shop with all the worry and fretfulness of a cat owner bringing his sick tabby to the veterinarian. And I had the exact same question asked with the exact same tone, “Can you…make it well?” Luckily, having lived most of my writing life in New York City, there were several reputable and reliable typewriter docs who gave my Galaxie II the expert care it needed.

I kept it for forty good years, until, finally, it collapsed and gave up the ghost. It had gone through many operations, transplants, bypasses, and shunts until its poor body just couldn’t hold up any more. I hardly recognized it at that point, it had so many additions from so many other machines—terminally ill typewriters that had selflessly donated their metal organs so that my typewriter might live. Still, it was a dark day when, with great sadness and solemnity, I let it go. I still think about it, even now. 

Smith Corona Galaxie II, thanks for the great ride.

                                                                    

The pianist who hummed

In 1955, a slim, pale twenty-two year old Canadian pianist walked into Columbia Records studio in New York City to record some Bach variations. My uncle, Howard Scott, was going to be the producer of this record. The pianist was Glenn Gould. The record that emerged from the six days spent in the studio in mid-June was The Goldberg Variations. It was a record that upended the classical music world.

It is very difficult today to convey the impact this record had, particularly in 1950s America. Yes, there are household names in the classical music world today. Yo Yo Ma comes to mind. But no one that I know off has astonished and awakened the listening world like Glenn Gould did with his first LP. The shock tremors, though distant now, are still being experienced.
                                                                       

Glenn Gould recording the Goldberg Variations, June, 1955

I don't remember when I first started to listen to Howard's stories about that mythical recording session and the quirky, perfectionist Gould. Probably after I was in college and learned a little something about music. Howard was amused and fascinated by Gould, and put up with his Madonna-like demands. Gould sat extremely low at the piano, for example. If the chair wasn't low enough to suit him, he had the legs cut down to size. He hummed while he played—loudly. You can hear him on the record. There's nothing technology could ever do to quell that. (My uncle once gave him a gas mask to wear as a gag to muffle the humming.) He played Back at Mach 3 speed, the notes emerging with the rapidity of a bag of marbles emptied onto the floor.
                                                                           

Glenn Gould and my uncle, Howard Scott

Some musicians found Glenn Gould's interpretations of music not only eccentric but exasperating. Still, there was so much wonder in his playing, he earned their respect. The great conductor George Szell said of Gould, "That nut's a genius." Later, Gould stopped performing in public and retreated to his Toronto home. He would only record. He loved radio, and he would often give late night interviews on the air from a studio he had in his home. He died young, at 50. I know that Howard was proud of being part of Glenn Gould's momentous recording debut, as well he should have been. In turn, I was proud that Howard was my uncle. Sometimes, for pure effect, I'd bring it up, say, at a party. "You know Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations? Well, my Uncle Howard produced that record." From those who knew the record, I got what I was looking for: wide eyes, a step backward and, "Really?"
                                                                     

Glenn and Howard

Listening as a young man about to try to have a go at it as a writer, I was intimately aware, for the first time in my life, of what a living artist could do. He could walk into a studio and change the way people thought about music. Or at least about a composer. And people did think about Bach differently after Glenn Gould's recording of The Goldberg Variations. In the 1950s in America, artists were not role models, believe me. But when my uncle spun his stories, and when I listened to the record and to the peregrine falcon flight of Gould's hands across the keys, I felt what one single person could do with, as Stephen Sondheim (a fan of Gould's) put it, "skill in the service of passion." Gould was like a god. In six days in the studio in New York, he created a heaven and an earth, gorgeous and substantial. That he was slightly strange ("He showed up in the studio on a broiling hot summer day in an overcoat and gloves," Howard said to me once, laughing) made it all the more appealing.

Glenn Gould indoors, preparing.

I would not, I was pretty certain, ever reach the equivalent heights of a Glenn Gould as a writer. But I was damn sure going to try.

            

The original album cover for The Goldberg Variations. Photos of Glenn Gould and my uncle.

Lusting after my friends' mothers

Well, naturally, I fell in love with my own mother first. But since my dad was the jealous type, it was out of the question.

But--ha ha ha--there were others! There was Alice's mother. Dudley's mother. Billy's mother. Beautiful, desirable women. I didn't know what desirable meant then, but that's what they were. I guess I must have been about seven or eight when I first began to want these women seriously. They were tall--of course they were tall.  Anyone over five feet was a giant to the squirt I was. They had lovely skin and lickstipped lips and earrings and they smelled wonderful and they had pretty legs and they had breasts.

I wanted them in the worst way. God knew what he was doing when he invented perfume and the brassiere. Not to mention earrings and fingernail polish and Tidewater, Virginia voices that asked me how I was doing in school. But God was also mean, because he didn't give me one of these beautiful mothers for myself. Whenever I saw them--whether it was at my house or at their kids' house--I felt like had been put in the San Quentin of love. There was an invisible chain link fence between me and them.

And what really drove me out of mind my was the question I asked myself: Why couldn't I have them, or at least one of them? I appreciated them! I admired them! I found them beautiful! I loved them!!!

Oh the scenarios I played out in my mind!

"Miz Kouri, do you like baseball cards?"

"Why...how did you know, Richie???!!"

"Oh, I don't know.  Take off your shirt!"

"Why of course I will, Richie!!!"

Or...

"Miz Thompson, I can lift a chair all by myself!"

"My goodness, Richie, let me kiss you on the lips while I hold you against my chest!"

Or...

"Miz Winston, you're really pretty for a mom."

"Richie, I'm leaving my husband. Come inside the bedroom! Quick!"

I never told my friends how much I was in love with their mothers. I thought maybe they might take it the wrong way.  I don't know. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe they were in love with my mother as much as I was in love with theirs.

That just wouldn't have been right, though.
                                                             

Rain

It's raining here in New Orleans. The sound is steady and beautiful. I have both French doors in my apartment open to it.  I can feel the freshness of the rain waft into the room where I'm working and I can smell the freshness as well. The way you can breathe rain even indoors. When rain falls, I always feel a kind of absolution. It means I can start anew. It's a kind of recurring baptism. 

Yes, there are rains that are not pleasant. I think of cold windy rainy March days in New York City. Or when you're driving at night and the rain is so brutal you can't see even beyond your windshield and your heart is about to exit your body.

All in all, though, everything about rain is mysterious and poetical. It's not a coincidence that Ernest Hemingway begins his memoir about Paris, A Moveable Feast, in rainy weather. This is is a cold, sad-producing rain, but nevertheless an inspiring rain. He walks from his apartment to the Place St-Michel to a good cafe. He takes off his damp coat, sits down, and begins to write. He's writing a story that we will all read one day, and, as the writer, he knows this, because he is writing this as a man of sixty or so, looking back.  So we are conscious of this and feel, in a way, intimate with the writer.

Hemingway writes,

"A girl came in the cafe and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin....."

If rain accompanies strong sensual moments, then you live a poem, you are fully alive. In college, years ago, I was in love with a beautiful, melancholy girl. Her name was Sarah. She would stay with me in my apartment off campus over the weekend. I remember, even today, one afternoon, together, in bed. I remember it started to rain. I remember the sound of the rain slapping against the leaves on the ground, and the damp smell of it breathing into the window and cooling our bodies. My arm was draped around her bare shoulder. The cascade of her soft hair fell onto my naked arm. I often think about the soft sound of the rain against the windowsill and on the leaves on the ground. Of us in bed together as we talked dreamily to the tat-tat-tat of rain against the leaves.

If we think about the wonders of being alive, so many are simple, straightforward. Rain is one. Replenishing, cleansing, encouraging. Making us poets at least for an hour or so. The beauty of those drops coming from the sky. The mystery of it. There are things in this world that are dark. Rain is not one of them.
                                                                   

John Waters: The Pope of Trash

A recent article in the New York Times about John Waters reminded me how much I dig this guy.

John Waters has always been himself. He doesn't give a good goddam what you think about what he does or says or what kind of movies he makes. He's not aggressive about it. He just is.

There are really two John Waters, at least as far as the movie-going public is concerned. The first is the John Waters of Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living. The second is the John Waters of Hairspray. Pink Flamingos may be, to borrow a phrase used to describe its main character, the great transvestite actor, Divine, the filthiest movie ever made. Once, years ago, a good friend of mine, on my spirited recommendation, took his girlfriend to see Pink Flamingos. The ticket seller leaned toward them and whispered emphatically, "Do not see this movie!" There is a now-notorious scene at the end where Divine proves she is the filthiest person alive by scooping up some freshly deposited dog shit and taking a big mouthful. Just before she shoves the doggy poo into her mouth, she looks to the camera and mouths, "I'm so hungry!"
                                                                   

 Divine

Every movie John Waters made before Hairspray was rated X or R. Hairspray was rated PG. This to many Waters fans seemed a kind of betrayal. As Waters himself said, "After that, I thought I'd never work again." I love Hairspray. (No, not the Broadway musical or the movie musical.The original movie.) It's easy to think of Waters as pure camp, but I don't think of him that way at all. I think Hairspray, which, among other things, is about racial integration in 1962 Baltimore, is a truly great comic film. Divine plays Edna Turnblad, the housewife who just can't understand her daughter Tracy's obsession with the Corny Collins Dance Show (obviously patterned after American Bandstand). One of my favorite Edna Turnblad lines: "Now l've got nothin' but hampers of ironing to do...and my diet pill is wearing off." Every child should be required to see this movie.

Now, here's the best part. I went to see "A John Waters Christmas" here in New Orleans on Tuesday evening at the Civic Center. It was a live show with the pope of trash himself. It promised to be an incredible evening. I love bad taste. I mean, what's not to like? He was f-king hilarious. One example: he said, "If you go home with someone and they don't have any books, don't fuck them." He did seventy minutes without stopping, and never disappointed once. The place was packed. It was great to see how much New Orleans loves him. Merry Christmas, John Waters!
              

John Waters' 2006 Christmas card

Library Kid

In the 1960 movie, The Time Machine, the lead character, played by Rod Taylor, travels forward in time to the year 802,701 via a machine he's invented. Once there, he discovers a world literally divided in half. Above ground live a passive, unthinking people called the Eloi. Below ground live their masters, the hulking Morlocks. Every once in a while, some Morlocks will emerge from a hole in the ground at night and grab some Elois for dinner.

Mystified, the hero at one point asks an Eloi if they have any books. He wants to see if he can find out how this frightening evolution occurred.

"Books?  We have books," the Eloi replies somnolently. The hero is led to a futuristic-looking library where, yes, there are books, rows and rows of them. He takes one from the shelf, and it turns to dust. He sweeps his hand across the long row of books, and they disappear in a cloud.

I live in New Orleans. There are three well known universities here, and I go to each of their libraries. Increasingly, though, as I walk into these libraries, I have the sinking feeling that I'm walking into mausoleums. I walk into the stacks and down the aisles, and the books on the shelves seem like relics. Or like tombstones, each one telling me tersely about its deceased occupier. I have never looked at books that way, and this is disconcerting.

I have always felt like Henry Miller felt about books. He wrote, "They were alive and they spoke to me!"

I'm not alone in my generation as being someone whose life was not only molded by time spent in libraries, but saved, as well. The books were alive and they did speak to me, often when actual people would not. Here there were accepting voices who welcomed me into their worlds, which were often strange and remote, sad and harrowing, thrilling and funny, and, yes, sometimes dull.  But always accepting, without reservation.

Are books on electronic devices books?  No. A book is something between two covers with printed words inside that can be held in your hands.

I'm not going to live long enough, but what I once thought was only a cinematic dream may come to pass. One day, perhaps not terribly far from now, someone will walk into one of those libraries, reach for a book, and feel it turn to dust.
                                                          
      

Stars taking up collections, final curtain

I played A Young Collector in A Streetcar Named Desire forty-five years ago. When I did, I stepped into a complete world. In this short scene, I have come to collect for the newspaper, and Blanche Dubois, alone in the house, has not wanted me to leave. She's used several slim excuses for me to stay, but now, finally, I am about to leave.  I think.        

            Young Man:
Well, I'd better be going--
             Blanche [stopping him]:
Young man!
     [He turns. She takes a large gossamer scarf from the trunk and drapes it about 
     her shoulders.]
     [The young man clears his throat and looks yearningly at the door.]
 Young man! Young man! Young, young, young man! Has anyone ever told you that you look like a young Prince out of the Arabian Nights?
    [The Young Man laughs uncomfortably and stands like a bashful kid. Blanche speaks 
    softly to him.]
Well, you do, honey lamb! Come here. I want to kiss you, just once, softly and sweetly on your mouth!
    [Without waiting for him to accept, she crosses to him and presses her lips to his.]
Now run along, now, quickly! It would be nice to keep you, but I’ve got to be good--and keep my hands off children.
    [He stares as her for a moment. She opens the door for him and blows a kiss at him as 
    he goes down the steps with a dazed look.]

She kissed me. This older woman who was everything that was forbidden to me. Those lips!  Now, in a few minutes, everything in my life was changed. I didn't want to leave. I wanted to stay and I wanted her to kiss me again. I wanted to touch her dress and her face and I wanted her to teach me everything she knew and to talk to me while she did about how I looked like a young Prince. I was a Prince. I was not a Collector. Her kiss remained on my lips. I walked slowly away and then off the stage. But that mean nothing, the exit. Tennessee Williams' world stayed with me. I walked within it for for hours and hours. (And still do, in a way.) Blanche DuBois had commandeered my heart. I had to see her again. And, as luck would have it, I would, the next night, at eight o'clock.