Well-Read Life™

The best how-to book turns 50

A friend of mine has begun a new career writing for an online financial newsletter. He came to me for advice, knowing that I’ve been a commercial writer, and I passed on the recommendation my journalism instructor gave to my class in 1977.

My instructor was a fulltime newspaperman who taught journalism in an extension course at the University of California, San Diego, where I had just graduated. He held aloft a copy of The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White and said, “Buy it, read it, memorize it.”

Then he set the slim book back down on the table and went on with his talk, of which I remember nothing else.

Uncharacteristically, I actually did read the little book. And became so entranced that I did, indeed, practically memorize what is affectionately known among writers and editors as “Strunk & White.” As it turned out, I would be teaching the little book myself just two years later, as a graduate teaching assistant at the very place where the book was born: Cornell University.

And so I pass the good word to you, dear reader, if you like to write: “Buy it, read it, memorize it.” The advice is as useful today, as this nearly ideal how-to book celebrates its 50th birthday, as it was a generation ago.

Writing, as most everyone who does it will agree, is hard work. Last month I had the honor of sitting on a panel at David Allen’s Getting Things Done Summit with one of this country’s most accomplished journalists, James Fallows. He told the audience that writing was still hard for him, yet he did it every day, as his many articles and bestselling books can attest.

How a practically perfect writer wrote

E.B. White himself, who may have come closest to being the perfect writer, had a devil of a time traveling from his initial draft to his final—even with a work as (deceptively) simple as Charlotte’s Web.

Cornell archivist Elaine Engst explains what it was like to examine all the drafts of Charlotte’s Web: “…the first draft is completely different from the finished book. What’s wonderful about looking at his drafts is that you see that even for somebody who was pretty close to a perfect writer, how much work went into his books: a ton of it.”

Yet eclipsing White’s gifts to young readers is his enduring gift to writers of all ages. His spare additions to his old English professor’s classroom guide, abiding by the now-famous precept “omit needless words,” produced something as close to the perfect how-to book ever published.

(Brief pause here for a commercial break: Have you read Levenger’s very own E. B. White work? We unearthed some of his early essays from The New Yorker and published them as a freestanding book for the first time. We were awed both by what he said and how he said it. Check out Notes on Our Times if you haven’t already. It’s uncannily timely for today.)

The alluring possibility that other nearly perfect how-to books exist, and searching for them, is one of the most enjoyable quests we have in leading our well-read lives. And so, dear reader, I ask you: do you know of other nearly perfect how-to books? Please share with the rest of the class.

Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Re-Living Your First Literary Love Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

The twelve-year-olds were hot and boisterous funneling back into their classroom after lunch recess. They had been dodging balls and swinging on bars out on the playground of crushed granite. Standing at the door, shooing them inside, was a gray-haired woman with a kindly smile. She had little trouble because the kids knew it was time to hear her read the next chapter of the book that had captured their imagination over the previous weeks.

The woman’s name was Mrs. Geissler and she taught the sixth grade at San Miguel Elementary School in Lemon Grove, California. The book she was reading was Island of the Blue Dolphins, and one of those students eager to hear the next chapter was me. (That's me in the second row from the bottom, second from the right with the blue shirt.)

 

When I started in Mrs. Geissler’s class I hadn’t been doing well in school, nor was I much of a reader. I spent more time watching Batman and the space program on TV, listening to my transistor radio, and annoying our unfortunate neighbors with my new trumpet. But Mrs. Geissler’s reading of Island of the Blue Dolphins caught me. For the first time, I was in book love—I couldn’t wait to hear what happened next.

What led me to recollect this long-ago time was Facebook. Through Facebook, I reconnected with former classmates from my San Miguel Elementary Class of 1966. We got to reminiscing and lit upon the subject of Mrs. Geissler’s after-lunch readings.

I remembered only a few details of the book—that an island girl and her brother had become stranded on an island, that he had died, and something about dogs. Mostly I remember the feeling of the story. There was beauty and desolation, and the girl had to do everything herself or die.

One of my classmates from San Miguel is Paula Novell Straus, who is now a teacher herself. She remembered Mrs. Geissler’s reading this way:

She used to read after lunch, usually a chapter, but we occasionally got her to read more because we were so engrossed in the plot. She fell for it when we begged her. If a chapter was really long, we didn't get to hear the whole thing, and were impatient for the next day. It took us a good month to get through the book it seems. We didn't have to stop and discuss it like I now have to do as a teacher. We just got to lay our heads down on our desks and be carried away to another time. She didn't ask us the author's purpose, have us look for similes or metaphors, find supporting details, or figure out the resolution of the conflicts. We just got to be.....

Four decades later, still in love

It occurred to me during these Facebook exchanges that I should read the book again—42 years later—and see what I thought of it today. Because I’m such an audiobook fan, and because originally we heard the book, I downloaded Island of the Blue Dolphins from Audible. Also, I ordered two copies of the printed book—an original 1960s-era version with its familiar dust jacket, and a modern hardcover, beautifully illustrated by Ted Lewin.

After I hit play on my iPod, it took only moments to be taken in again. A few bars of music set the stage and then the magical voice of Tantoo Cardinal carried me back to the island that had captured my imagination as a lad.  Cardinal is a Canadian film and television actress, with Dances with Wolves and Legends of the Fall to her credit. Her first-person reading of the young Karana is perfectly cast.

As for the writing, it has a spare, simple, E. B. White style that is well-suited to a story as it might actually have been told by a young Native American. As an adult, I can see why the book has lasted. It deals with enduring themes of wilderness versus civilization, peacetime and war, lives balanced with nature versus nature’s exploitation, gender prejudice and smashed stereotypes.

When he penned this tale, the author Scott O’Dell was in his 60s. He was a career newspaperman and local historian. He had sailed the waters off the California coastline and heard a story of a young girl who had been stranded on her island. The Island of the Blue Dolphins was his first children’s book and it won the Newbery award in 1961. He wrote plenty of children’s books afterwards, but this remains his most well known. I see from the old dust jacket that O’Dell had lived in Julian, California, a few miles inland from our school. He could have driven over after breakfast and visited when Mrs. Geissler was reading.

How do you thank a teacher?

It was in Mrs. Geissler’s class that I started, for the first time, doing well in school. We had to write a paper on a country. I chose Mexico and got an A. Another student accused me of being “a brain.” It was the first time anyone had cast such an aspersion my way, and it shocked me.

Mrs. Geissler gave me my first drink of literature and it was salty and wild tasting. It came with the sound of waves crashing and the iridescence of clothes made of cormorant feathers. My classmate Paula looked up Mrs. Geissler in school records and found she passed away in 1978, long before I thought to thank her.

Now I’m buying Island of the Blue Dolphins for some parents I know. Perhaps if they read it to their children, they too will be transported.

Have you re-lived your first book love? I’d like to hear your story. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you’ll connect to Comments).

Churchill’s ‘Finest Hour’: Calling Those Who Heard

Guest blog by Mim Harrison, Editor, Levenger Press

A note to our readers—

In order to have heard Prime Minister Winston Churchill deliver live over the radio what would become known to history as the “Finest Hour” speech, you would have had to be listening on 18 June 1940. A 12-year-old at the time would today be 80.

Most of those who were already waging war—or, in the United States, were soon to be fighting for the Allies—now have passed away. Before it is too late, we ask your help. If you know someone who heard the speech live, will you reach out to that person and ask what he or she remembers?

We would be most honored if you would share these stories from ear-witnesses, so we can help preserve and pass them on to others.

Our Levenger Press book, The Making of the Finest Hour, shows how Churchill crafted, edited and re-edited his famous speech, which you can hear on the CD that’s included. I’ve asked the editor of Levenger Press, Mim Harrison, to recount how the book came to life. She shares her recollections—including her own personal regret—in the story below.

—Steve

It was in the elegant dining room of London’s Royal Automobile Club, where one does not conduct business of any sort if one wishes to be invited back, that the idea of publishing a book about Sir Winston Churchill’s famous “Finest Hour” speech of 1940 first took hold. Levenger Press had just successfully published our second Churchill book in 2005, and we were eager to do more.

My host, a seasoned U.K. publisher of art books, felt Levenger could handily publish a book containing facsimile pages of Churchill’s “Finest Hour” speech drafts, along with a CD of his BBC radio broadcast. Because Levenger sells directly to readers, the book would be spared the rough-and-tumble of shelf life in bookstores.

Had we been in L.A., we probably would have mapped out the idea on a napkin and made a few calls on our mobiles. Instead, we sipped on liqueurs and ordered dessert.

Then I legged it back double-time to my not-so-elegant hotel, and madly scribbled down the many ideas we’d talked about before they vanished into the damp March air.

The making of the book

The Making of the Finest Hour took some doing to make. Good fortune was on our side, though. The great leader’s namesake and grandson, Winston Churchill, gave us a green light on the project. Churchill Archives, the repository of Sir Winston’s papers, produced superb facsimiles of the speech drafts—the first draft, marked up and redlined and crossed through and rewritten by Sir Winston himself; and then the final draft, on the smaller pieces of paper and typed in the specific line sequence that Churchill insisted on.

Visuals were a challenge. We didn’t want to use a photo of Churchill—too predictable. What, then? The answer came in one of those aha moments: his typewriter, of course, the noiseless Underwood his secretary used to type the speech. For that we sought the help of the staff at Chartwell, Churchill’s country home. They gamely tracked down the typewriter and took shot after shot until we had what we wanted.

The Churchill Centre’s Richard Langworth drew upon his encyclopedic knowledge of Churchill for his introduction. He capped it with a remarkable statement by Churchill’s daughter Mary about the way her father wrote speeches.

As for the radio broadcast—you would think it would be easy to get hold of Churchill’s historic BBC broadcast of 18 June 1940. But because of various issues surrounding ownership, rights and recording dates, it was a bit like groping through an English garden maze and hoping you’d eventually find your way out.

Eventually we did. Just to be sure we had what we were looking for, though, I went to the BBC offices in New York and asked my sales rep, Nelda Gil, to play the recording for me.

The call to a generation

Churchill’s “Finest Hour” speech was also one of Churchill’s finest hours. On 18 June 1940, most of Europe had succumbed to Hitler’s madness, leaving only Britain to fight. Churchill proved to be the free world’s secret weapon on a public stage, his genius for oratory being a galvanizing force first for the people of Britain, then for Americans as well.

But 18 June 1940 happened sixty-eight years ago—more than half a century. That time in our history is reaching its penumbra, passing daily out of living memory, as the number of people who heard Churchill’s speech live over the radio rapidly diminishes.

I am not of that generation—that Greatest Generation—but consider myself fortunate to be of parents who are. One of my uncles, career Army, fought in that war of Finest Hour. So did his daughter-in-law’s father, whom I met for the first time just as we were finishing The Making of the Finest Hour.

I showed him my working copy of the book, as I thought he might find it of interest. It was when I placed it in his hands that I realized it was, for him, more than a history book. It contained a part of his history.

Churchill had moved him to action as a soldier. Now Churchill moved him again, more than half a century later, almost to tears. The look of reverence on his face as he held that book is now a part of my history.

I made a mental note to send him a copy. But I waited too long, and like so many of his generation, he passed away.

From shared sacrifice to shared memory

Ken Burns once told an audience that the impetus for making his 2007 documentary of World War II, “The War,” was to honor that generation before it disappeared; approximately 1,000 WWII veterans were dying every week. He spoke with that remarkable passion of his of the “shared sacrifice” of that generation.

Each generation’s code is its own, perhaps never to be fully understood by another. But I would like to think that as long as Sir Winston’s “Finest Hour” is heard, some part of his generation, and my parents’ generation, will live in our shared memory.

I believe I caught a glimpse of this possibility on the bright December day I went to the BBC offices in New York, to meet Nelda and check the CD of the speech.

Nelda’s desk was one in a vast bullpen of desks, most inhabited by people of a still younger generation—twenty- and thirty-somethings who, by virtue of their job, were inured to hearing all kinds of recordings.

Nelda slid the CD into her machine, pressed play, the announcer said “Ladies and gentlemen, the Prime Minister,” and then there it was: Churchill’s voice, rising from more than half a century ago above the radio static.

The entire room went quiet. They stopped, and they listened, and I think it’s safe to say that more than one of those young people heard something they had not heard before.

One generation passes and another comes of age. And somewhere in that changing of the guard is the voice of a finest hour.

Do you have a Finest Hour memory to share? Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments). We will endeavor to share and preserve all stories as part of the living history surrounding this speech that meant much to the course of history.

—Steve

The Last Lecture

Perhaps you have heard of The Last Lecture. Randy Pausch a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, delivered one in 2007. The lecture created a sensation.

As I’ve come to understand it, the idea of a last lecture has been around for a while in academic circles. It’s an opportunity for professors to pretend they have only one last lecture to give, and therefore must sum up their life’s work in a final message for the ages.

In the case of Randy Pausch, it wasn’t pretend. He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was given only months to live.

His lecture became a touchstone on YouTube, where the number of views at the moment I write this has just reached…let me check again… 2,212,434. The lecture has also been turned into a charming book, which I’ve just finished and recommend. The book contains 60 short chapters, two of which I’d like to mention here.

Service worth its salt

One chapter is titled “The $100,000 Salt and Pepper Shaker.” It tells the story of how when Randy was a boy, he and his sister bought an expensive set of ceramic salt and pepper shakers for their parents, as thanks for taking them to Disney World. Alas, the bag slipped from Randy’s fingers as he walked from the store, and the shakers broke.

Passing adults suggested to the crying Randy that he might tell the store what happened.  To his amazement, the store staff replaced the shakers for free.

When Randy’s father heard the story and its happy ending, it made him determined to do his own good deed. For many years afterwards, at his own expense, he arranged to bus economically disadvantaged young people to Disney World.  He spent an estimated $100,000 over the years, despite being of modest means.

Original digits—the ones on our hands

The other chapter is titled “The Lost Art of Thank-You Notes,” and its message is about the benefits of an old-fashioned, handwritten note of thanks. Randy tells the story of how a certain handwritten note from an applicant to an elite technology program—a note sent to a secretary who had helped her—ended up changing everything. Coming from a computer science professor who specializes in virtual reality, this tribute to our original digits carries special weight.

The last lecture that will last

Randy continues to wage his battle against cancer, but even when he is gone, the golden rings of positive influence will emanate from that Last Lecture for as long as people watch Randy’s lecture, or read his little book, and apply his lessons in their own lives.

On Randy’s website, www.thelastlecture.com, you’ll find links to the video of his lecture, plus more previews of the book.

The audiobook, which contains an interview with Randy at the end, is available for download at www.Audible.com. 

If you have seen the lecture or read the book, let me know what you think. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you’ll connect to Comments).

Charming Boovie preserves the old world of hard-to-find books

With the rapid pace of technological change, the old way of struggling to find out-of-print books is a fading memory. Fortunately, the old way has been marvelously preserved in a delightful boovie that also happens to be a true story.

The book is 84 Charing Cross Road. Set in the years immediately following World War II, it chronicles the transatlantic correspondence between Helene Hanff, a New York City booklover, and Frank Doel, a straight-laced British bookseller. The uncertainty and serendipity of the old ways come through with humor, pathos, and love. Published in 1970, the book was made into an equally heart-tugging movie in 1986, starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins.

Tight finances and her busy writing life kept Hanff from visiting England. In the end, when she finally does, Doel has passed away and the shop is empty. And so an inefficient yet sweet chapter in the evolution of reading has passed into history as well.

What’s a boovie, you may ask? It’s simply a movie adapted from a book. The conventional practice is to read the book first and then see the movie, but there may be equal (perhaps even greater) merit in seeing the movie first and then reading the book—a reverse boovie.

Now it’s my turn to ask. What are your thoughts about boovies, and those boovies that give one last toast to a way of life that is no longer?  Let me know what you discover while pursuing your viewing and reading. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Boovies Score at the Oscars

Gratifying it was for us boovie lovers to watch the 2008 Academy Awards. There was tuxedoed Cormac McCarthy smiling each time his No Country for Old Men won an Oscar. It beat out three other books and a short story to win the award for best adapted screenplay. It also won Oscars for best picture, best directing, and best supporting actor by Javier Bardem, with his chilling portrayal of evil incarnate.

The Kite Runner received an Oscar nomination for original score.

Ian McEwan’s Atonement was yet another bestselling book paired with a movie adaptation.

That makes three bestsellers that those commenting on this Well-Read Life blog had already crowned as boovies before Oscar did. (A boovie is that welcome serendipity of both the book and the movie being good, if not great.) The Academy apparently agrees with our readers.

The Oscar-nominated short story was Alice Munro’s “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” which formed the basis for Sarah Polley’s screenplay for Away from Her. Searching online, I see that a book has been issued under the same name as the movie, with a cover showing Julie Christie. Sounds like a great opportunity to do a reverse boovie—watch first and then enjoy a quick read of the book’s 96 pages.

The other short book, at 144 pages, is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Its brevity is understandable. The now-deceased author, Jean-Dominique Bauby, was left paralyzed and speechless after a stroke. He wrote the book by blinking his left eye.

All of the above are relatively new writing. The outlier, in terms of its age, is There Will be Blood, for which Daniel Day-Lewis snagged the Oscar for best actor. This movie was based on the 1927 novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair. For an historical description of this relatively unknown work by the author famous for The Jungle, see this fascinating piece by movie reviewer and biographer Scott Eyman.

Personally, I’m going to do reverse boovies with Away from Her and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It’s safe to say that I wouldn’t have discovered either of the books if the movies hadn’t achieved acclaim. But happy days! Boovies lead us from one good art form to another.

As “Once” composer Glen Hansard said as he held his Oscar aloft, “This is amazing! Make art! Make art!”

How about you? Are you enjoying a boovie, or reverse boovie, now? Let me know what art you discover while pursuing your viewing and reading.  Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

A Rocket That Still Ignites

Most people call them reading lists. I call them your Library of Candidates—books you look forward to reading. Rocket Boys recently moved from my Library of Candidates to my Living Library.  I’d recommend it for your Library, too.

Like many communities across America, our county of Palm Beach, Florida, chooses a book to read together. The leader of our local organization (www.pbcliteracy.org) asked me to read and recommend one of the five books being voted on; I’m so glad she did. I had seen the movie October Sky, but had not read the book it was based on. Here is my pitch for this lovely memoir.

Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam Jr.

The story begins with the blast-off of Sputnik in October of 1957. The beep-beep-beep of this first satellite from our atomic rivals unnerves grownups in Cold War America, yet thrills certain adolescent boys in a coal-mining town in West Virginia. The story is told by one of those boys in a way so magical, it’s hard to believe it’s all true.

Other modern forces impinge on Coalwood, West Virginia: the grinding change from industrial manufacturing toward the science and engineering pursuits that would dominate the second half of the 20th century. Yet even more meaning comes from enduring tensions—between a husband and wife over their differing views of what their lives should be, about lopsided love, about ordinary injustice and extraordinary courage.

The fragile combination of powerful forces required to lift a rocket seem similar to the forces that could shut down a hopeful young life…or raise it to the heights. These and other tensions keep you eagerly turning pages.

In 1998, Rocket Boys was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller, and serves as evidence that bestseller status and great literature can coincide (as indeed it did for the likes of Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Steinbeck). The following year, Rocket Boys was made into an award-winning movie called October Sky.

Homer Hickam, born in 1943, dodged the mining engineer career his father had hoped for him, and instead made his career at NASA. The wonder is that he learned not only how to power rockets, but also how to power words so that they ignite with rare force.

And if you’re swept away with this memoir, there’s more good news. Rocket Boys is the first in a series of three memoirs, and Hickam has also written popular novels.

The history of Sputnik may also lead you to enjoy Sputnik: The Shock of the Century, by Paul Dickson.

Since both the book and the movie are marvelous (a “boovie” in my parlance), we can enjoy comparing the two. Why was the name changed to October Sky? What was left out and for what reason? Despite inevitable cuts, does the movie stay true to the book? Must it? Searching Wikipedia, www.imdb.com as well as the author’s own website, www.homerhickam.com, can lead to some surprising answers.

Reading, viewing, Web research:  all of it is good. Rocket Boys reminds us that we explore literature because it’s meaningful and our perception of its meaning has a power to please us in ways we can’t fully understand—something like rockets soaring off into a cool October sky.

P.S. If you’re interested in adding any of the books I mentioned to your Library of Candidates, here’s a link to www.booksense.com, in case you’d like to buy them from your favorite independent bookstore.