Here Is New York

White, E. B. Here Is New York. New York: Little Bookroom. 1949. Print.

First Sentences:

 

On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy....for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York.


Description:

Unless you live in New York City or very much enjoy visiting this delightful, challenging city, you might think you would have little interest in reading E.B. White's Here Is New York from his 1949 summer living in the city.  But you would be so very wrong. 

White is a magnificent writer, a quiet observer relating to us lucky readers his thoughts about the sights, sounds, people, and even the air of New York. And rather than me try to convince you of value of this short book/essay (only 56 pages), I'll just present some quotes from White and let you judge for yourself.

• New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute.

•  I heard the Queen Mary blow one midnight, though, and the sound carried the whole history of departure and longing and loss.

•  Many people who have no real independence of spirit depend on the city's tremendous variety and sources of excitement for spiritual sustenance and maintenance of morale.

•  Not many [commuters] have ever spent a drowsy afternoon in the great rustling oaken silence of the reading room of the Public Library, with the book elevator (like an old water wheel) spewing out books onto trays.

•  The city makes up for its hazards and its deficiencies by supplying its citizens with massive doses of a supplementary vitamin -- the sense of belonging to something unique, cosmopolitan, mighty and unparalleled.

•  On a summer night the [Bowery] drunks sleep in the open. The sidewalk is a free bed, and there are not lice. Pedestrians step along and over and around the still forms as though walking on a battlefield among the dead.

• New York is not a capital city -- it is not a national capital or a state capital. But it is by way of becoming the capital of the world. 

Well, there it is for you. By now, you'll either love these wonderful descriptions of a uniquely complicated city (as I do) and want to visit it or at least read more about it. Or you will have had enough and are ready to move on to some other diversion. Your choice. But with E.B. White as your guide, how can you go wrong at least reading his brief essay, This Is New York? 

The city is uncomfortable and inconvenient, but New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience -- if they did they would live elsewhere

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Hayes, Bill. Insomniac City.   

The thoughts of the author as he wanders the streets of New York City in the late night hours, including the people he meets, the restaurants he visits, and the quiet, dark sights he enjoys.

  

Happy reading.

Fred

Find More Book Recommendations - along with an Introduction to The First Sentence Reader.

 

The Dictionary People

Ogilvie, Sarah. The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary.. New York: Knopf 2023. Print.

First Sentences:

 
It was in a hidden corner of the Oxford University Press basement, where the Dictionary's archive is stored, that I opened a dusty box and came across a small black book tied with a cream ribbon....Perhaps those ghosts were guiding me because the discovery I made that day would lead me on an extraordinary journey.


Description:

Sarah Ogilvie, author of the fascinating new non-fiction book, The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary, was an editor for the OED and thus had access to the bowels of the dictionary's vast archives. It was there she made an incredible discovery: the address book of James Murray, editor of the OED from 1879-1915. In it, Murray had listed the names, addresses, books read, and special notations (e.g., "Hopeless") from the thousands of people who contributed unusual words towards the creation of this all-encompassing dictionary.

Author Ogilvie, upon this discovery as well as a photo collection of contributors collected by the OED's creator and first editor Frederick Furnivall, decided to research these OED contributors, some of whom had sent in over 100,000 word entries to be considered for inclusion in the dictionary. Who were these people? Why did they work so hard reading obscure books to discover uncommon words? And what was the process these words had to go through until they could be part of the OED? 

Those questions were enough to hook Ogilvie to spend eight years wading through this trove of names and perusing letters, articles, photographs, and scribbled notes, along with "censuses, marriage registers birth certificates, and official records" to unravel the backgrounds of these people and their relationship to the OED and its editor Murray.

The OED was conceived to be "the first dictionary that described language....[and] would trace the meaning of words across time and describe how people were actually using them." To gather these words and the sentences that contained them, the original editors "crowdsourced" the project between 1858-1928, placing advertisements for volunteer readers in newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and through popular literary clubs and societies like the Philological Society, which became the underwriter of the OED's expenses. Most readers worked for free, simply desiring to just be a part of this important, historic project.

The Dictionary People could also be cranky, difficult, and eccentric...but that, paradoxically, also makes them lovable , or at least fascinating.

Slips of 4 x 6 paper were sent to contributors for them to record interesting words on the slip, along with the book where each was found, and a sentence that contained the word that would illustrate its usage. These slips were then gathered by sub-editors (often Murray's own family members - he had 11 children), alphabetized and placed in chronological order in the workspace named the "Scriptorium." Editors then created definitions, checked for earlier references of each word, and gathered the finished words into the specific dictionary section/letter currently under development. These sections were published as they were developed, until the final letters were completed and all could be compiled into one vast book. 

In the mid-nineteenth century, the launch of a "uniform penny post" and the birth of steam power (driving printing presses, and leading to railway transport and faster ocean crossings) enabled this system of reading for the dictionary to be so successful...[creating] the conditions for a global, shared, intellectual project.

Here are a few examples of the OED contributors whom Ogilvie discovered, and then placed in chapters arranged alphabetically by the person's distinguishing profession (or quirk) for The Dictionary People:

• Archaeologist - Margaret Alice Murray, a nurse living in India, focused on books of that culture until she became an Egyptologist at age 31, and wrote her own autobiography at age 100 titled, My First Hundred Years;

• Best Contributor - Thomas Austin Jnr, who sent in 165,061 words. Second place went to William Douglas (151,982 words);

• Explorer - Sir John Richardson, surgeon for John Franklin's ill-fated three-year voyage to discover the Northwest Passage, an undertaking where most of the men starved to death or resorted to cannibalism;

• "Hopeless" Contributors (so noted in the address book) - Those people who requested books to read and slips to fill out, then never sent in any contributions, often keeping the valuable, old books;

• Lunatics - John Dormer, "one of Murray's most faithful Subeditors and Readers," was an inmate at the Croydon Mental Hospital psychiatric institution. (Note: Three of the top four OED contributors were in mental asylums. "Lunatic" was, in 1871, a defining term the US Census, along with "Dear and Dumb or Blind, Imbecile or Idiot.");

• New Zealander - W. Herbert-Jones, a wildly popular speaker about New Zealand, (complete with the new invention of projected slides), contributed many words from that country, although he had never visited New Zealand and the information he presented to audiences was completely made up;

• Zealots - James Murray, overall editor of the OED, who had left school at 14, but nonetheless learned twenty-five languages

Contributors could select the books of their own interest to scour for interesting words. Author Ogilive sneaks in some examples of these words submitted which are fascinating in their own right. Here are some words submitted by William Douglas (another member of the asylum "lunatics") from Robert Knox's System of Human Anatomy, taken from the staggering 1,600 words he turned in from that book alone.

• aphasic - "having lost the power of speech"
• buccinator- "a muscle of the wall of the cheek"
• occipitofronalis - "a muscle of the scalp
• ozyat - "an obsolete drink of almond and orange-flower water"

One interesting finding out of the myriad of discoveries Ogilive unlocked was the three words with the most "senses" (definitions). These are  "Run" (654 senses), Go (603 senses) and Take (586 senses). Incredible.

When finally completed and published in 1928, the Oxford English Dictionary, contained "400,000 words, 15,000 pages of literature, 2,000,000 quotations, and 178 miles of type." Peoople still contribute slips of words to update the OED, including Chris Collier who sent in over 100,000 words between 1975 to 2010, taken solely from the local newspaper, the Brisbane Courier-Mail. Ogilive tracked him down in Australia and talked with him about his contribution. He was a reclusive sort, hording a vast collection of movie posters and taken to mowing his lawn and walking the streets at midnight ...naked,

I found myself totally absorbed into this mid-nineteenth century world of dedicated, tireless, scholarly (and sometimes quirky) people who built the OED. I simply could not get enough details about who these people were and how many had voluntary devoted their lives to this project. I highly recommend The Dictionary People for anyone interested in language, people, and the world of the 1800s.

But what united [readers] was their startling enthusiasm for the emerging Dictionary, their ardent desire to document their language, and, especially for the hundreds of autodidacts, the chance to be associated with a prestigious project attached to a famous university which symbolized the world of learning from which they were otherwise excluded.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

Winchester, Simon. The Professor and the Madman.   

Author Winchester unravels the bizarre, true history of James Murray, the director  of The Oxford English Dictionary, when he discovered that one of his most prolific contributors of new words for the OED was currently committed to an asylum for the criminally insane.. 

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

     See More Book Recommendations 

          (along with an Introduction to The First Sentence Reader)

 

Voices and Silences

Jones, James Earl and Penelope Niven. Voices and Silences. New York: Scribner 1993 Print.

First Sentences:

Early in my awakening memory, two grown men lean on a rail fence talking about livestock. It is spring of 1935. Since I am only four, they seem very tall to me.


Description:

Seems I've been in the auto-biography reading mood lately, so with he recent death of the actor James Earl Jones, naturally I hunted up his personal memoir, Voices and Silences, and was tremendously impressed. Not only is his recalling of his life story honest, intriguing, and thorough, Jones is a wonderful writer (along with co-author Penelope Niven) who tells his history with a confident , clear voice. (I only wish there was an audiobook with him as the reader. What a narrative voice that would be).

Since I knew nothing about Jones beyond his acting roles, it was fascinating to learn of his upbringing. Abandoned by both his father (to pursued an acting career) and mother (a mentally unstable person prone to wandering away from home for days), he was relocated from Mississippi to a farm in Michigan to be raised by his grandparents.

 

Soon after joining this new home, he began to stutter, an affliction so great that he simply did not speak for eight years, from age six to fourteen. Teachers accepted his silence and tested him through his written answers. Eventually, a teacher discovered Jones had composed some poetry and asked Jones to read something of his in front of the class. Surprisingly, Jones found he could read lines of writing perfectly without a stutter, thereby opening a door to script-reading and acting.

Because of my muteness, I approached language in a different way from most actors. I came at language standing on my head, turning words inside out in search of meaning, making a mess of it sometimes but seeing truth from a very different viewpoint,

After high school and a short army career (where he read Shakespeare plays in his off-hours), he decided to try to pursue acting, using the GI Bill to attend The American Theatre Wing in New York City.

 

To get enough money for living, he reconnected with his father and together they refinished floors, worked as janitors, and made sandwiches at a local diner. For summers, he joined a summer theater to perform for tourists and lived in the theater's "haunted" bell tower to save money.

I was twenty-four years old. I had given up all the certainty I had ever known -- farming, the university, the Army. I knew acting was risky business. I did not let myself dwell on the difficulties all actors face. I simply set to work, as hard as I knew how to work, at the acting classes, and the menial jobs that kept me fed while I studied. I did not know what else to do but to work, and trust that with work and time any talent I had would come out.

Jones performances with the American Theatre Wing were noticed by Joseph Papp and Lee Strasberg. Strasberg had taught the Method Acting technique to Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and many others. Jones unsuccessfullly auditioned to take Strasberg's acting classes for seven years. Later, in talking with Strasberg, the teacher explained that he and Elia Kazan felt:

There were actors such as George C. Scott and me who, by following their own particular drumbeat, had already found an effective technique....Rather than pull them back and teach them the Method, they said, 'We'd better let them go on their own paths.'

In 1966, Jones bumped into Papp on the sidewalk and was offered a small part in Henry V for Papp's brand new Shakespeare Festival, "Shakespeare in Central Park," a series of free outdoor plays for the public.

Roles started to pile in as more and more directors saw Jones perform. Meanwhile, he and his father, while had never really reconciled, found common ground discussing the character and motivations of Shakespeare's Othello, the Moor of Venice. It was a role Jones' father had studied for years and readily gave his opinions to his son prior to James Earl first playing that great role.

Othello, like me,, like my mother and like my father, was a stranger in a strange land....My father had never played Othello in a major production, but as I studied the role with him, I was apprenticing to a master, although an unfulfilled master.

It was fascinating to read Jones' thoughts about taking on new roles, some of which were unsuccessful (Paul Robeson and Nat Turner) as well as the ones in which he triumphed Jack Johnson in The Great White Hope, Lenny in Of Mice and Men, Othello). He praises actors like Jane Alexander (who called him "Jimmy Jones") who played opposite him in his breakout Broadway role in The Great White Hope, and his other leading ladies, two of whom he married who had played Desdemona to his Othello. 

 

Jones is analytical over every aspect of acting, from directors to scripts to messages that he felt the plays should project. For example, he discusses why, in his mind, the theatrical version of The Great White Hope was so powerful and successful while the movie, a popular film that earned him an Academy Award, had changed the original script so much to make his Jack Johnson character and therefore the film a failure.

 

As he aged, the long runs of plays became too much for Jones. He then turned more to television and voice acting. 

In the early days of my television career, I seemed to be typecast as a doctor, a detective, or a tribal chief....In one of my more memorable scenes [on Tarzan], the Supremes appeared clad demurely in habits, playing African nuns. I appeared more flagrantly attired in the stereotypical loincloth and feathers assigned to the African tribal chief. For reasons now obliterated from my memory, the script called for the nun-Supremes and the tribal chief to sing "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore." And we did, habits, feathers, loincloth, and all.

By now you can certainly understand that I loved this book, learning about James Earl Jones' background and his rise to fame; about the acting profession; the challenges he faced; his relationships with fellow actors and the public; and his role as a Black man with a powerful voice. I am all in for this book and hope that others who enjoy this wonderful man's acting will pick it up for a look. You certainly will not be disappointed.

Acting can never really be taught. It must be learned in a thousand ways, over and over again. Learning to act is ongoing, a lifelong process, and the responsibility rests with the actors....The challenge is not intellectual, but emotional: how deeply in tune you are with the emotional, imaginative planes of being.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

     See More Recommendations 

          (and an Intro to The First Sentence Reader) 

________________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Wilson, Victoria. A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True: 1907-1940.   

A towering biography about one of film's most versatile actresses. Highly-detailed, but so full of interesting people, conversations, films, and behind-the-scenes dealings that the book flies by. Highest rating.  (previously reviewed here)

 

Special Post - Holiday Gift Books

Description:

I know it is a bit early for the holidays, but since I am taking a break from writing new book recommendations until after the New Year, I thought people might be looking for interesting titles to read themselves or give to others over the gift-giving season.

Below are some of my favorites with links to my reviews. Every one of these I highly recommend. I hope a few will catch your interest and work their way onto your shelves for reading or for sharing with friends and family.

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

     See More Recommendations 

          (and an Intro to The First Sentence Reader) 

________________________

Fiction

Animals

Horse (historical fiction) - Geraldine Brooks

Remarkable Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt

West With Giraffes (historical fiction) - Lynda Rutledge

  

Humor

Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

Food: A Love Story - Jim Gaffigan

The Golf Omnibus  - P.G. Wodehouse

Round Ireland with a Fridge - Tony Hawks

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen  - Paul Torday

 

Mystery

Booked to Die - John Dunning

Remarkable Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt

The Twyford Code - Janice Hawlett

 

Romantic Relationships

The Japanese Lover - Isabelle Allende

Meet Me at the Museum - Anne Youngson

The Odds - Nan Stewart

The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion

Two Across - Jefff Bartsch

 

Science Fiction

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing - Hank Green

Cold People - Tom Rob Smith

Golden State - Ben H. Winters

Machine Man  Max Barry

Seveneves  - Neal Stephenson

Sleeping Giants - Sylvain Neuval

 

Short Stories

The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke - Arthur C. Clarke

 In Sunlight or in Shadow - Lawrence Block, editor

 

Small Towns / Western Setting

Juliet in August - Dianne Warren

Outlawed  - Anna North

Plainsong - Kent Haruf

The Whistling Season - Ivan Doig

 

Thrillers

Before I Go to Sleep - S.J. Watson

I Am Pilgrim - Terry Hayes

Memory Man - David Baldacci

Shibumi  - Travanian

The Silent Patient - Alex Michaelides

Sometimes I Lie - Alice Feeney

 

Young Adult

Brewster  - Mark Slouka

Ender's Game - Orsen Scott Card

Five Children and It  - E. Nesbit

Hatchet - Gary Paulsen

The Hobbit  - J.R.R. Tolkein

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline

 

Leftovers - Just Plain Great Reads

An American Marriage - Tayari Jones

Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson

The Immortalists  - Chloe Benjamin

The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien

Manners from Heaven - Quentin Crisp

The Speed of Dark - Elizabeth Moon

The Scapegoat - Daphne Du Maurier

To Serve Them All My Days - R.F. Delderfield

World of Wonders - Robertson Davies

 

Non-Fiction 

Animals

The Soul of an Octopus - Sy Montgomery

 

Books Themed

Dear Fahrenheit 451 - Annie Spence

One for the Books - Joe Queenan

Outwitting History - Aaron Lansky

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distractions - Alan Jacobs

 

People

84 Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff

At Ease: Stories I Tell To Friends - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Educating Esme  - Esme Raji Codell

The Feather Thief - Kirk Wallace Johnson

The Hammersteins - Oscar Hammersteins

Insomniac City - Bill Hayes

The Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940 - Victoria Wilson

Never Cry Wolf  - Farley Mowat

Nothing To Do But Stay - Carrie Young

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio - Terry Ryan

Shakespeare Saved My Life  - Laura Bates

We Took to the Woods - Louise Dickinson Rich

Sports

The Glory of Their Times - Lawrence Ritter

Handful of Summers - Gordon Forbes

Three-Year Swim Club - Julie Checkoway

Wait Till Next Year - Doris Kearns Goodwin

Why We Swim - Bonnie Tsui

 

War

To End All Wars - Adam Hochschild

The Volunteer - Jack Fairweather

We Die Alone - David Howarth

Winter Fortress - Neal Bascomb

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Ease

Eisenhower, Dwight D. At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends. New York: Doubleday 1967. Print.

First Sentences:

Talking to oneself in Abilene, in the days of my youth, was common enough. Generally speaking, it was a sure sign of senility or of preoccupation with one's worries. Now, it is nationally advertised as the hallmark of the efficient executive.


Description:

I enjoy biographies and autobiographies as much as the next person. However, some can be a bit pedantic in their attention to major occurrences in the subject's life, details that paint the person as a highly important figure. Maybe not as honest a picture as I sometimes hope for.

But President (and author) Dwight D. Eisenhower took a new approach. Assuming that every event in his life as a military, political, and academic figure had already been covered by multiple biographers, Eisenhower decided to honestly and humbly tell a behind-the-scenes series of episodes in his life that truly reveal his character. 

His collection of these reminiscences, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, reveal his thoughts, dreams, conversations, decisions, ambitions, and failures in such an casual, often humorous manner that you feel he is talking just to you as a intimate friend, revealing himself and how occurrences that shaped his life and even the world really happened.

The book spans Eisenhower's years from birth in Kansas and childhood in Texas, training at West Point, military career, family life, and being nominated to run for president just as he was just settling in as president of Columbia University. Each episode in between is matter-of-factly unfolded as Eisenhower "talks" about situations and people that affected his life.

Early years

• As a five-year-old he finally overcame the torment dished out by a huge gander by taking a stick to defend himself, and thus admitted he learned "Never to negotiate with an adversary except from a position of strength."
• A great reader of history, he so neglected his chores that his mother locked his books in a closet ... an effective punishment until Eisenhower found the key one day and continued to read whenever his mother was not present.

West Point

• Admitted, "Where else could you get a college education without cost?" 
• Assigned to the "Awkward Squad" for his inability to march with coordination. 
• In his first weeks, just after learning how to salute every officer, he tried three times to salute a highly-decorated man he passed in uniform, only to discover he was saluting the local drum major.
• As punishment from an upperclassman, he and a friend had to report in "full dress coats," which they did, but did not put on any other clothes. 
• His disciplinary file, partially reprinted in the book, reveals him to rank 125th in discipline out of 162 cadets.

Family

• The first time he met his future wife, Mamie, she accompanied him on his Fort Sam Houston guard duty patrol.
• At Camp Colt in Gettysburg, PA, the base suffered an outbreak of Spanish Influenza that killed many men. Ike, his family, and staff were spared due to an experimental nasal spray and throat medicine given by the camp's doctor.
• He and Mamie lost their two-year-old first born son, Ikky, to Scarlet Fever, “the greatest disappointment and disaster in my life, the one I have never been able to forget completely."

Military

• He had a long-time friendship with George Patton, and constantly tried to stop his friend from making controversial statements in public.
• Learned to fly at age 46, 30 years after the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, where he communicated with the ground by dropping paper messages tied to rocks, then flying low to buzz buildings until someone came out to see what was up and retrieve his notes.
• His WWII orders were "Land in Europe and, proceeding to Germany, destroy Hitler and all his forces." There was nothing about invading Berlin, something Eisenhower was widely criticized for not pursuing.

Columbia University

• Took over for the previous University president who had served in that office for more than 50 years. Eisenhower was not recognized as the new president and denied access by a watchman to the president's office on his first Saturday when the university offices were closed
• Eisenhower felt his greatest contribution to Columbia was that he persuaded their beloved football coach stay at Columbia rather than taking the coaching job at rival Yale.

Anecdote after story is gracefully rolled out by a master storyteller. Each insight, carefully woven into a chronological timeline of his life's events, is captivating and insightful. While there is little about the specifics of WWII battles, there is plenty about his discussions with his officers, advisors, and other military leaders as well as the results of his decisions.

The book ends as Eisenhower reluctantly gives up his position as Columbia's president to accept the nomination (which he did not desire) to run for President of the United States. 

Please give this book a try if you have interest in great storytelling, interesting people, and the life of one important figure in American history. I loved it and now feel a new respect for President Dwight Eisenhower the man as well as the military figure and academic leader. Now, I just need to look for a follow-up book by him detailing his later years.

The making of history, the shaping of human lives, is more a matter of brief incidents, quiet talks, chance encounters, sudden flashes of leadership or inspiration, and sometimes simple routine than it is of heroes, headlines, grand pronouncements, or widely heralded decisions.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

     See More Recommendations 

          (and an Intro to The First Sentence Reader) 

________________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Sassoon, Sigfried. The Memoirs of an Infantry Officer: (Book Two in the The Memoirs of George Sherston trilogy) .   

A fictionalized but very realistic depiction of World War I in France as seen through the eyes and mind of an French officer./ Based on Sigfried Sassoon's real heroic life and later disillusioned memories of his military experiences during that War, including his eventual pacifism and protest to end the conflict.  

 

To the Linksland

Bamberger, Michael. To the Linkland: A Golfing Adventure. New York: Viking 1992. Print.

First Sentences:

I think the man liked my wife. He kept saying to her, "If you want to eat, eat now. No food till we get to Port Bou."


Description:

Linksland is the old Scottish word for the earth at the edge of the sea -- tumbling, duney, sandy, covered by beach grasses. When the light hits it, and the breeze sweeps over it, you get every shade of green and brown, and always, in the distance, is the water. The land was long considered worthless, except to the shepherds and their sheed and the rabbits, and to the early golfers.

For golf enthusiasts looking longingly at the fleeting summer, please check out Michael Bamberger's To the Linksland: A Golfing Adventure, It's a highly-satisfying peek into the inner workings of tournament golf, the players that strive weekly to make a cut, and the intangibles that make up a satisfactory golf swing. All this is played out on the grand and not so wonderful courses that compose the European Golf Tour.

In 1991, Michael Bamberger, a newspaper sportswriter, gave up his apartment, took a leave of absence from his job writing for Sports Illustrated, and, joined by his newlywed wife, set off to explore the wide world of golf as a caddy.

I wanted to lead the life of the professional amateur, the man who earns a living wage, and not more, for being around the thing that consumes him, the thing that fascinated him, the thing that he loves. 

Bamberger caddied in the national championships of Portugal, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, and, finally, Scotland, golf’s ancestral home. Once there, Bamberger fell under the spell of one of golf’s fabled  teachers and thinkers, John Stark, whose instruction was simply to "Hear the ball."

The book is divided into two sections modeled after a golf score card. In the first half, "Going Out," Bamberger documents his adventures caddying the European Tour for golfer Peter Teravainen, while in the second half, "Coming In," he describes his own play on famous and obscure golf courses in Scotland, always seeking to improve his game as well as explore the birthplaces of golf.

Scotland was the homeland: the place where the game took root centuries ago...the place where the game breathed free....Scotland was a place where the crunching sound of cleats against the brick floor of a clubhouse served as an invitation to play nine more, starting in the long, late dusk and holing final putts by the light of the moon.

Caddying for Teravainen, a journeyman golfer who survives tourney to tourney by making just enough money to keep going, Bamberger gives us a very personal look into Tour life through the eyes and actions of a man committed to golf. Despite being a very long ball striker, Teravainen had yet to win any tournament in his twelve years playing the European Tour. That did not phase him in the least

When you play as well as you can, and it's not enough, there's not much to be disappointed about. You've done all you can do. 

Peter chooses to ride the cheap, rickety caddy bus (the only player to do so) to each tour destination to save small amounts of money. His clothes are off-the-shelf, his game unpredictable, yet tantalizingly close to making him a top ten tour player. His outlook is almost always optimistic.

Story after story, beautifully written, follow as the pair experience the Tour and talk about players like Faldo, Ballesteros, Nicklaus, Player, Palmer, and Watson, along with fellow obscure competitors pursuing the same goals: play well, survive, go on to the next tournament.

In the second half of the book, Bamberger outlines, after foregoing caddying, his personal quest for improvement in his game.

It is the promise of improvement that makes golf captivating...In golf, in so many ways a bodiless game, the results are wholly tangible. How many whacks. Each player must decide for himself if he is improving....I wanted to search for the primal heart of golf.

Bamberger eventually meets John Stark, the legendary Scot golf pro who advises him to "hear the sound the shaft makes as it comes through the air, listen to how rhythmic and sweet that sound is." Stark encourages Bamberger to play on many of Scotland's courses, taking enough time "to discover some of our secrets." 

The author visits and plays courses with curiously named holes ("Bents," Whins," Blin' Dunt," Coffins," "Finnyfal," etc.) that make up St. Andrews, Cruden Bay, Gullane, and Mjachrihanish,. Everywhere, he tries to glean information about what is the most important advice his fellow players can offer.

But the highlight of the book is when Stark takes Bamberger to Auchnafree, "undiscovered, primal, pure," a six-hole course laid out by one man on his own property. Fairways are not mown or fertilized there, only kept "maintained" by sheep who also construct the bunkers as shelters from the cold. Stark plays the only two rounds there each year, And Bramberger is in awe during their round.

I had rekindled all the feelings of excitement for the game I had know as a school boy. All the clutter that impedes the game in the United States -- the golf carts, the expensiveness, the slowness, the social trappings -- vanished from mind and memory. Through Stark, I had discovered real golf, and I was a happy man.

A wondrously, uplifting, insightful, and deeply-felt book for golfers and those who just enjoy reading about people, places, and dreams.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

     See More Recommendations 

          (and an Intro to The First Sentence Reader) 

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Bamberger, Michael. The Ball in the Air.   

Author Bamberger profiles three non-professional golfers he meets, including a girl from Nepal who grew up living in a golf course equipment shed and learned to play using a tree branch). They talk about their love for the game and the challenges they have and will face to get onto a course.  

A Life Impossible

Gleason, Steve. A Life Impossible: Living With ALS: Finding Peace and Wisdom Within a Fragile Existence. New York: Knoff 2024. Print.

First Sentences:

I sat naked in the shower while a twenty-four-year-old man washed my armpits.  Across the bathroom, my three-year-old daughter, Gray, sat in the middle of the floor, cross-legged like the Buddha, with one difference. She was wailing hysterically and incessantly. Inconsolable. And I was incapable of helping her.


Description:

It is almost impossible to comprehend living day to day, hour to hour, a life where every voluntary muscle in your body is unable to function. You are robbed of the ability to walk, raise your arms, close your hands, speak, even breathe. Smiling and blinking are denied. 

Yet such is the ongoing existence of author Steve Gleason for the past thirteen years (and counting) since his diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, i.e., Lou Gehrig's Disease).

He thoughtfully, emotionally, and openly discusses his journey from his boyhood through years as a professional football player, to young married trying to understand his fatal ALS diagnosis, and on then his continuing struggles with his restricted life today in his memoir, A Life Impossible. 

To call him a survivor is too passive a label. He is a battler. Throughout his life he has deeply contemplated his life, his personal situation, his emotions, and his future. His brilliant writing in this book are transporting. Gleason allows readers into the deepest parts of his mind, from denial of the diagnosis as a 33-year-old man to a firm confidence he can beat the disease; from despair as his relationships crack under the strain of his needs for constant, intimate care, to occasional peace of mind as revelations occur to him that give him even temporary triumphs in communication or action.

I'd spent most of my life seeking the sacred and extraordinary, but [meditation] was showing me that the sacred is within us....I'm not sure how much it was improving my "real life," but for a guy who was living with ALS, to have an hour a day of peace and even bliss, it was a welcome change.

During Gleason's New Orleans Saints' football career, he played on special teams. In 2006, he blocked an opposing Atlanta Falcons' punt on their first series of downs which was quickly recovered for a Saints' touchdown. This was an incredibly gutsy play by Gleason which surprised everyone on the field, the stadium, and in the Monday Night Football audience, and led to a Saints victory. 

It was an historic play as this was the first game held in the New Orleans Superdome, a beloved landmark for the citizens, which had finally opened after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Gleason's block and eventual Saints' victory signaled the beginning of the city's recovery. There is now even a statue of Gleason blocking that punt residing in front of the stadium, so important was the symbolism of New Orleans' triumph.

But ALS soon robbed him of his dream to live off the grid with his new wife, Michel, in an isolated spot somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Slowly and unceasingly, he awoke each day to another loss of strength and function. "Most people awake each day from a nightmare. I awake to a nightmare," he stated. 

He also lost all his savings due to an investment with friends in an alternative real estate company which went bankrupt. He repeatedly tried for a different diagnosis, experimented with every type of possible cure from faith healers to diets to meditation. His eventual failures to walk even a few steps, swim, have sex, or swallow forced him to realize that ALS was progressing relentlessly.

But although he writes of his discouragement with his situation, he also created "Team Gleason" with friends and families to explore treatments, medical devices, and opportunities to expand horizons for other ALS patients. 

He wanted to prove to himself and others that life can still be lived, and began to travel, give speeches, fish for salmon in Alaska, and even reach the top of Machu Picchu in Peru sitting in an electronic wheelchair that had to be carried over foot-wide pathways.

Gleason proved to ALS sufferers and others that the world could still be expanded . While he still could speak, he recorded 1,500 English phrases for a company called CereProc which then created a customized voice similar to his own for oral expression of his typed words.

Team Gleason grew and donors contributed to ALS research. The highly popular ALS fund-raising Ice Bucket Challenge was started by a Team Gleason member. Other ALS patients formed discussion groups to share stories, coping techniques, and understanding hearts with each other and the world. Through Gleason, others learned they were not alone, had options, and could lead expanded lives.

Gleason received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest United State Civilian honor, in 2019. Then in 2024 he was presented with the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage given for "strength, courage and willingness to stand up for their beliefs in the face of adversity.” Upon receiving this award, Gleason delivered a brilliant speech (created before the ceremony using only his eye/laser letter-by-letter composition program) verbalized through his synthetic voice to the ESPY audience. A documentary film, Gleason, was recently finished (available on Amazon Prime). His social media site has over half a million followers today.

 

A wonderfully powerful book that spares readers no emotion, thought, or dream that enters author Gleason's mind and world throughout his journey. Highly recommended.

Now I realize this: Life gets ugly at times, so when we have the chance to do something amazing in the midst of ugly, go for it.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

     See More Recommendations 

          (and an Intro to The First Sentence Reader) 

________________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Bauby, Jean-Dominique. The Diving Bell and the Butterflyh: A Memoir of Life in Death.   

One man's memoirs, painfully written using only the blinking of his one working eyelid, revealing how he experiences the "Locked-In Syndrome" where nothing on hiss body can be moved, no words can be spoken, yet his mind and awareness are still present in his seemingly lifeless body. Absolutely astonishing and powerful. (previously reviewed here)