Just a few years ago, unconscious people were suggesting that I use my degree in Literature and Creative Writing to work at a book store and I actually thought that was highly inappropriate use of a very expensive and yet unpaid for college degree. I wanted to keep loving books too and admit that I was wary that the average bookstore clerk did not love books, like many city employees who work at libraries but do not love books or even read many of them. Would books be equal to say, cabbages, to my co-workers? There were two independent book stores that I wanted to work for, one Duttons on Laurel Canyon, and the other The Bodhi Tree in West Hollywood. Independents.
Those were the days... Every bookstore I could have applied to work at has gone belly up like cockroaches sprayed with cockroachacide. At best they go online where you can order what you heard about somewhere else.
So yes, it is remarkable that someone is opening the store of his dreams despite the independents and many of the big stores deader than dead. (If it will make any of you feel any better, I bought a used book today called "Gallop!" by Rufus Butler Seder, a Scanimation Picture Book, at one of those hole in the wall, where-is-the-little-man-behind-the-cashregister?-stores.)
The article I'm linking to is about Tony Jacobs who just opened SIDESHOW RARE AND REMARKABLE BOOKS, on Idaho Avenue near Sawtelle. The book started with years of personal collecting of books, pulp fiction! It's written by David Suissa who is President of the Jewish Journal.
click on the title!
8/3/12
7/27/12
D. H. LAWRENCE quotation
"Nothing is more fatal than the disaster of too much love." - D.H. Lawrence
7/19/12
ROGER GRENIER Quotation on dogs
"Loving Dogs goes along, more or less, with despairing of humans." - Roger Grenier
7/7/12
LIBRARIANSHIP QUESTIONABLE
"When is the last time YOU had a conversation with a librarian who loves to read herself and gave you a personal recommendation to a book?
The days of calling long distance and asking a research librarian to help you orient or find things in their collection may be over and so maybe should the very expensive library science masters degree because I fail to see how on the job this speciality major is truly necessary."
The days of calling long distance and asking a research librarian to help you orient or find things in their collection may be over and so maybe should the very expensive library science masters degree because I fail to see how on the job this speciality major is truly necessary."
7/3/12
WHO WHAT WHERE WHY ARE YOU?
Recently an old friend who hasn't been in touch for three years asked me this question.
I have yet to answer him.
I thought it was a fun-in-an-ironic-sort-of-way question.
WHO WHY WHERE WHAT AND WHEN are the BIG QUESTIONS in journalism. In fact, a journalist is supposed to seduce the reader into reading the WHOLE ARTICLE by attempting to answer all those questions in the first sentence or, if less skilled, the first paragraph, but, reading through the LA Times recently, and being one of those people who tends to read whole articles anyway, I realized that a gentle unfolding of the answers is just as interesting, and maybe even more so.
Now I feel I must compose a ONE SENTENCE ANSWER THAT WILL BE (somewhat) seductive and succinct at once.
WHO WHAT WHERE WHY ARE YOU?
I have yet to answer him.
I thought it was a fun-in-an-ironic-sort-of-way question.
WHO WHY WHERE WHAT AND WHEN are the BIG QUESTIONS in journalism. In fact, a journalist is supposed to seduce the reader into reading the WHOLE ARTICLE by attempting to answer all those questions in the first sentence or, if less skilled, the first paragraph, but, reading through the LA Times recently, and being one of those people who tends to read whole articles anyway, I realized that a gentle unfolding of the answers is just as interesting, and maybe even more so.
Now I feel I must compose a ONE SENTENCE ANSWER THAT WILL BE (somewhat) seductive and succinct at once.
WHO WHAT WHERE WHY ARE YOU?
6/28/12
MRS. PARKER and THE VICIOUS CIRCLE : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW
"At the center of the circle is a woman ahead of her time," it says on the DVD cover. (I often wonder who wrote the back covers of DVD's and my guess is some promo person who never saw the movie.)
I once got a book out of the library that consisted of Dorothy Parker's witticisms. I read it and thought "You had to be there." I just couldn't get into it. I just didn't find anything she said that witty.
I knew that Mrs. Dorothy Parker and her round table in New York consisted of some of the brightest literary talents of the time so I wanted to know more about her. So, when I saw the DVD at my local library, I borrowed.
This film (which I watched twice) depicted Dorothy Parker as droll - very! Yes, Dorothy Parker, as acted by Jennifer Jason Leigh, was droll, and in context, funny. I actually agree with the term "biting wit," also used on the DVD cover.
The mostly male writers she was surrounded by included playboys and playwrites, poets and screenwriters, in Hollywood and in New York City. She was there at VANITY FAIR magazine, and in the planning for THE NEW YORKER magazine but how? Was she a muse? An inspiration? One more alcoholic?
Rather, I think Dorothy Parker was "a depressive," as they used to call people who were always depressed - very! She had some things to be depressed about too. Raised without a mother,having a husband who abused her back in the day when few women could go without a husband, unrequieted love, an abortion, all these were in her experience.
Somehow she was an inspiration anyway, respected anyway, invited anyway.
Perhaps what impressed me most about Mrs. Dorothy Parker, who appears to have not been able to write in her elder years after so much of a life, was that she left her estate to the civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Her poetry for the film was used with the permission of the NAACP. The film neglected to explain this important fact. It did not reveal what had gone on in her life or her mind that moved her to do so. I think it would have been a better film if it had been explored or even used as the trajectory.
The movie attempted to recreate a scene of friendship in which a great many people who became important and known for their work interacted. None of these characters could really be fleshed out in the time and space of a film.
C Christine Trzyna 2012 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
I once got a book out of the library that consisted of Dorothy Parker's witticisms. I read it and thought "You had to be there." I just couldn't get into it. I just didn't find anything she said that witty.
I knew that Mrs. Dorothy Parker and her round table in New York consisted of some of the brightest literary talents of the time so I wanted to know more about her. So, when I saw the DVD at my local library, I borrowed.
This film (which I watched twice) depicted Dorothy Parker as droll - very! Yes, Dorothy Parker, as acted by Jennifer Jason Leigh, was droll, and in context, funny. I actually agree with the term "biting wit," also used on the DVD cover.
The mostly male writers she was surrounded by included playboys and playwrites, poets and screenwriters, in Hollywood and in New York City. She was there at VANITY FAIR magazine, and in the planning for THE NEW YORKER magazine but how? Was she a muse? An inspiration? One more alcoholic?
Rather, I think Dorothy Parker was "a depressive," as they used to call people who were always depressed - very! She had some things to be depressed about too. Raised without a mother,having a husband who abused her back in the day when few women could go without a husband, unrequieted love, an abortion, all these were in her experience.
Somehow she was an inspiration anyway, respected anyway, invited anyway.
Perhaps what impressed me most about Mrs. Dorothy Parker, who appears to have not been able to write in her elder years after so much of a life, was that she left her estate to the civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Her poetry for the film was used with the permission of the NAACP. The film neglected to explain this important fact. It did not reveal what had gone on in her life or her mind that moved her to do so. I think it would have been a better film if it had been explored or even used as the trajectory.
The movie attempted to recreate a scene of friendship in which a great many people who became important and known for their work interacted. None of these characters could really be fleshed out in the time and space of a film.
C Christine Trzyna 2012 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
6/23/12
TAISHA'S BOOK STILL NOT OUT : WILL IT EVER BE?
Guess what? If you go to April 1 2023 and see the post TAISHA ABELAR'S LOST BOOK - STALKING WITH THE DOUBLE (RESTORED VERSION) you will be able to read a manuscript copy of the book.
************
A little background.
Many years ago when I was a regular at an independently owned coffee house on Ventura Boulevard and taking night classes at the local community college, one of the servers there, who I really liked, showed me her copy of Taisha Abelar's first and only book, and encouraged me to read it. This coffee house friend had recently gone on a vision quest which she believed had oriented her purpose in life and future career.
I read the book and was utterly mystified and intregued. Since then I've read the book twice more, each time years enough apart to not have remembered everything I read before, and each time having a different pov on it in the end, as my understanding or mystification of my own life changes me.
Since then I've also read around the whole Carlos Castaneda controversy; was Taisha one of his cult members? Did the various "witches," or devotees, or whatever they really were, who published books around the subject, all pass fiction off as nonfiction? Or did they really experience what some of them wrote about?
Castandeda died a human death of cancer, and soon after several of these people, including Taisha, disappeared. There was talk of a possible ritual suicide, maybe in an abandoned mine or cave in the desert. Taisha's family filed a missing person report but many people felt that these people had just staged a disappearance and gone off to Mexico or wherever, to continue their esoteric pursuits. Tellingly, money inherited was left behind as well.
One of the Castaneda "witches," who inherited the bulk of his fortune, continues to live and remains silent and protected by an attorney. She has not written anything.
Then, a couple years ago, it was reported that Taisha had a new book that would soon be published. Some people said this meant that all along she had been hiding out and writing and would soon reappear, possibly to take over leadership of the group. A few years have gone by and speculation is that she left behind an unfinished manuscript which, by now, has seen a number of ghost writers.
The publishing house has announced publication a number of times, and so the book became almost ready to order on Amazon. So far, no Taisha, no book.
C 2012 Christine Trzyna / Christine Trzyna Writerly Life All Rights Including Internet and International Rights Reserved.
6/14/12
RAMONES : BABY I LOVE YOU
Thinking of Carlos
UPDATE SEPT 7, 2012 : Reading Johnny Ramone's new book and he says this is the song he/they just hate, a Phil Spector production. But I love it because I think it is IRONIC that the Ramone's recorded it.
UPDATE SEPT 7, 2012 : Reading Johnny Ramone's new book and he says this is the song he/they just hate, a Phil Spector production. But I love it because I think it is IRONIC that the Ramone's recorded it.
5/18/12
MAXWELL ANDERSON quotation
(The story) must be a conflict, and specifically, a conflict between the forces of good and evil within a single person. - Maxwell Anderson
5/10/12
WOMEN OF MYSTERY : THREE WRITERS WHO FOREVER CHANGED DETECTIVE FICTION : SARA PARETSKY : SUE GRAFTON : MARCIA FULLER : FILM REVIEW
WOMEN OF MYSTERY : THREE WRITERS WHO FOREVER CHANGED DETECTIVE FICTION : DVD REVIEW
The three women writers (some of us prefer to just be called writers) are Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, and Marcia Fuller. The focus on this film was how the woman detective characters that these three writers have individually invented has proven to be a role model for women readers in real life. For instance, Sara Paretsky tells of a letter she got from a Japanese fan, a woman engineer still dealing with daily sexual harassment on the job.
The film also focused on testimonials from the authors on how well they "know" their invented character and how at times the fact that the character is different than they are, even nothing like them, can become an issue of separation, as if that character were a real person.
I wonder, does a writer sometimes feel obligated to design a character who is inauthentic as a result of feeling the pressure to be, say, nice, in their own real life?
Maybe because I've heard authors speak of their chaacters and have invented some of my own, I know that we must "get into the head" of our character. We must know them as we know ourselves. We ask what would she (not us) do in any situation?
NEW DAY FILMS is the source of this older DVD.
The three women writers (some of us prefer to just be called writers) are Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, and Marcia Fuller. The focus on this film was how the woman detective characters that these three writers have individually invented has proven to be a role model for women readers in real life. For instance, Sara Paretsky tells of a letter she got from a Japanese fan, a woman engineer still dealing with daily sexual harassment on the job.
The film also focused on testimonials from the authors on how well they "know" their invented character and how at times the fact that the character is different than they are, even nothing like them, can become an issue of separation, as if that character were a real person.
I wonder, does a writer sometimes feel obligated to design a character who is inauthentic as a result of feeling the pressure to be, say, nice, in their own real life?
Maybe because I've heard authors speak of their chaacters and have invented some of my own, I know that we must "get into the head" of our character. We must know them as we know ourselves. We ask what would she (not us) do in any situation?
NEW DAY FILMS is the source of this older DVD.
5/3/12
OZZY OSBOURNE : TRUST ME I'M DOCTOR OZZY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW
Christine Trzyna Book Review:
First, let me say that I'm not a big fan of heavy metal and don't think I could identify a single song that Ozzy Osbourne ever sang or played on.
Second, let me say I'm not a big fan of Reality Television. I think you must be very very bored to watch other people living their lives instead of living yours. So I never watched a single episode of the Osbourne family reality TV show, whatever it was called.
However, any book subtitled "Advice from Rock's Ultimate Survivor," draws my attention.
Truly, Ozzy is an original voice and original sensibility, and this book MADE ME LAUGH OUT LOUD (LOL! Yeeesh!) again and again.
Besides the "way out-there "confessional tone about all the drugs and alcohol that he consumed (I'm against the abuse of substances) or which consumed him, and how he actually physically and mentally survived all that, probably by having a sense of humor, the thing that most fascinated me was his telling of having been called to supply DNA so that he could be studied as a survivor! (Truthfully!)
The format is Q AND A.
Where did he get those questions?
Apparently from readers who feel they can tell this man anything, ask him anything. Example (page 103 hardback): "Dear Doctor Ozzy: Do you think people should be allowed to rate their doctors on the Internet, like they can rate albums - or do you think the medical profession is too important to be subjected to the kind of abuse you got in 1970 for the first Black Sabbath LP?"
So while Ozzy's confessing, so are his questioners and some of his readership's problems are doozies.
TRUST ME I'M DR. OZZY is C 2011 Ozzy Osbourne
Grand Central Publishing New York
C All Rights Reserved Christine Trzyna 2012 including Internet and International Rights
First, let me say that I'm not a big fan of heavy metal and don't think I could identify a single song that Ozzy Osbourne ever sang or played on.
Second, let me say I'm not a big fan of Reality Television. I think you must be very very bored to watch other people living their lives instead of living yours. So I never watched a single episode of the Osbourne family reality TV show, whatever it was called.
However, any book subtitled "Advice from Rock's Ultimate Survivor," draws my attention.
Truly, Ozzy is an original voice and original sensibility, and this book MADE ME LAUGH OUT LOUD (LOL! Yeeesh!) again and again.
Besides the "way out-there "confessional tone about all the drugs and alcohol that he consumed (I'm against the abuse of substances) or which consumed him, and how he actually physically and mentally survived all that, probably by having a sense of humor, the thing that most fascinated me was his telling of having been called to supply DNA so that he could be studied as a survivor! (Truthfully!)
The format is Q AND A.
Where did he get those questions?
Apparently from readers who feel they can tell this man anything, ask him anything. Example (page 103 hardback): "Dear Doctor Ozzy: Do you think people should be allowed to rate their doctors on the Internet, like they can rate albums - or do you think the medical profession is too important to be subjected to the kind of abuse you got in 1970 for the first Black Sabbath LP?"
So while Ozzy's confessing, so are his questioners and some of his readership's problems are doozies.
TRUST ME I'M DR. OZZY is C 2011 Ozzy Osbourne
Grand Central Publishing New York
C All Rights Reserved Christine Trzyna 2012 including Internet and International Rights
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)