Books: In the NewsIf you were to get fired (or demoted or strongly reprimanded), would you prefer the reason to be:
– because you knowingly did something wrong? (and therefore the consequences are justified)
OR
– because you did what you knew to be the right thing, even though it went against management’s direction? (which would make the consequences unjustified)
What would be easier for you to live with?
700 Sundays, by Billy Crystal
From the bn.com site:
Reading the book version of comedian Crystal’s Broadway solo show can be initially off-putting. The jokes he uses to warm up his audience (on why Jews eat Chinese food on Sunday nights, his complaints about his circumcision, the nasal pronunciation of Jewish names, etc.) are distinctly unfunny on the page. But once Crystal is finished with shtick and on to the story of his marvelous Long Island family, readers will be glad they can savor it at their own pace. There’s the story of Crystal’s uncle Milt Gabler, who started the Commodore music label and recorded Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit” when no one else would. Then there’s the Sunday afternoon when Holiday takes young Crystal to see his first movie at what later became the Fillmore East. There’s even Louis Armstrong at the Crystal family seder, with Crystal’s grandma telling the gravelly-voiced singer, “Louis, have you tried just coughing it up?” At the heart of these tales is Crystal’s father, the man who bought his little boy a tape recorder when he announced he wanted to be a comedian and didn’t scold when he recycled off-color borscht belt routines for family gatherings. Crystal’s dad worked two jobs and died young, so they had maybe 700 Sundays together-but how dear they were.
Well, first of all, I don’t agree that Crystal’s jokes were unfunny on the page. I found myself laughing out loud throughout the book and I think anyone familiar with Billy’s style of comedy would do the same. You can actually hear his voice come through the pages. And there were times when I couldn’t stop myself from crying. The tremendous grief from losing his beloved father so young was heart wrenching.
The reader will instantly fall in love with Crystal’s family, especially his supportive and generous father. A man who worked two jobs to keep his family of five going, you knew he had to be worn out come Sunday, his only day off, but he spent every one of them with his boys…showing them how to hit a curveball, taking them to see the Yankees, or just sitting around the house listening to the latest, greatest music.
I had no idea that Billy’s family was so intimately involved with the jazz music scene either. How wonderful to have memories of people like Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong in your childhood living room or watching your father onstage, emceeing a concert of all the jazz greats of the time. And to have an uncle who started the Commodore music label as well as the concept of mail order music (at one time, music sold by Commodore through the mail was third worldwide of all mail order sales, after Sears and Montgomery Ward) were interesting facts that I hadn’t known.
The size of the book is sobering though. One hundred and seventy-eight pages were all that was needed to tell the story of his father. Definitely not enough time for a father and child to have together. But what a wonderful 178 pages they had.
I had this whole post written about how life isn’t all bad even though that’s all I seem to talk about lately and how I take things for granted and I really am thankful for things and blah, blah, blah.
Blah.
It was just way too smurpy. And that is too a word.
So let’s just cut to the chase. There are bad things. There are good things. The trick is to not focus too much on one or the other.
Hello, Kettle. My name is Pot.
And I may talk more about him in future posts, but for now, I just want to commemorate this as the day that I met Lenny. He is one of those nursing home residents that has made his way into my heart.
See. Good things.
Lennon in America: 1971-1980, Based in Part on the Lost Lennon Diaries, by Geoffrey Guiliano
Remember The Telephone Game? When one person would say something to a second person and then the second person would tell the same thing to a third person, and so on, and so on, until you reached the end of the line? And whatever the last person heard wasn’t remotely close to what the first person said?
The entire time I was reading this book, I had the distinct impression I was the sorry soul at the end of the line.
I knew I was in for disappointment before even finishing the introduction. The author rambled on for five pages as to why this book depicts the real John Lennon and every other biography is bunk. Not exactly a savvy ploy in my book, especially since there was no mention anywhere in the book that the author had even met Lennon. I got the creepy late-night infomercial host vibe right out of the starting gate.
Then, there was the book itself. The writing was sophomoric, the thoughts random and the facts and cites completely absent. The few parts that seemed somewhat realistic or honest were those that seemed to be pretty much public knowledge. Even the Publisher’s Weekly panned it:
In an attempt to build the most “human” Lennon composite–libidinous, possibly bisexual, drug-addled, self-loathing and Yoko-controlled–Giuliano spent 16 years interviewing Beatles insiders, listening to rare audiotapes, amassing Lennon’s personal correspondence and examining his much-talked-about unpublished diaries, of which Giuliano obtained a copy in 1983. “Can you imagine,” the longtime Beatles biographer gasps in his introduction, “what it feels like to hold in your hand a document you know has the power to change the course of Beatles history completely and forever?” After trumpeting a publishing revolution, he then warns readers that they “will not find in this book the voice of John Lennon as quoted from his diaries.” Nor will they find paraphrases, because Lennon’s entries “were often incomplete thoughts and snippets–the exact meaning of which is difficult to discern.” If Giuliano’s own double-talk isn’t enough to diminish this work’s credibility, his endless, voyeuristic descriptions of Lennon’s sexual encounters are. Giuliano believes that Lennon’s mother, Julia, who allegedly placed her son’s hand on her breast when he was 14 years old, is to blame for his hero’s idiosyncrasies. At first Giuliano’s intentions to give Lennon admirers “some truth” seem earnest, but in the end it seems that he seeks only to shock. “It’s very unhealthy to live through anybody,” Lennon said after Elvis’s death, but Giuliano keeps trying to worm his way into Lennon’s soul in this crude, predictable exhumation.
In short, this book was a disappointment. I wanted to learn more about my favorite Beatle but that just didn’t happen.
Well, Hazel and Alice are spotless once again. Blech. The whole time I was wiping up spills and cleaning up grime, I was thinking, “How bad would this be if I actually, you know, cooked?” Seriously. Blech.
Besides that, I’ve cleaned the rest of the kitchen, straightened the front closet, cleaned out my “underthings” drawers (I can’t believe how many bras I have — I only have two boobs, so what’s the deal?), filed away a week’s worth of mail and played nursemaid to my poor neglected houseplants. They’ve all had nice little trims and I’ve got some cuttings sitting around in the sun, waiting to grow some hairy roots. I even changed the dirt on one plant that looked like it could use some new digs.
Oh, and I’m halfway through an awful biography of John Lennon. I’m actually hoping that the entire thing is fabricated. But more on that once I finish it.
I do think that nap yesterday was my saving grace. Well, that and the $100+ I dropped at Sephora. 
I feel like a new person. With a clean house and new plant babies.
So how was your weekend?
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