Poetry and Rain

In essential things, unity; in nonessential things, liberty. 

In all things compassion.

Luis J. Rodriguez

That's Luis J. Rodriguez, the Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. I attended a wonderful evening of poetry this evening at my neighborhood bookstore, Chevalier's. I wasn't familiar with Rodriguez, but now I am, and I had the distinct sense that he is beloved. His poetry was funny and startling and made me glad to live in this town. Suzanne Lummis and Nicelle Davis read and performed as well, and there was laughter and wryness and deep sighs. Being at our little bookstore with so many people who love poetry right here in the city of angels made me glad. Glad. What a weird, muscular word.

It's raining.

Things I Learned This Week

netsuke, LACMA

• about netsuke: I'm reading a riveting memoir called The Hare with Amber Eyes, written by Edmund De Waal. Mr. De Waal is a ceramicist and writes beautifully about how the inheritance of a collection of 264 tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings, called netsuke, led him to discover the history of his family, the Ephrussis, a 19th century banking dynasty. When my bookstore friend Liz recommended this book, I confess that I had no inclination to read it. Netsuke? The Japanese? Proust? Vienna during the Second World War? These are not things I'm even remotely interested in. Well, I'm glad that I did because I can hardly put it down.

• about how amazing this blog community is: The people who read my blog and leave comments are astounding. The whole conflagration that was my and others' exchange with The Girl Who Espouses To Be a Bioethics Expert burned all the brighter as the comments poured in. I'd urge you to read those comments -- I'm certain you'll learn as much as I did. Thank you. This photo reminds me a bit of what it feels like to be part of such a vocal, strong and confident community:

• that my son Oliver responds really well to lists, even those whose number one item is Say Good Morning. He not only did that every day this past week, but he made his bed, fed the dog on his designated day, picked up his mess in the bathroom after his shower each night and did his homework with a minimum of complaint. Who knew that a black Sharpie and a piece of computer paper would trump yelling?

• the inventions of the Chinese (paper, gunpowder, and I can't remember what else) as described in my son Henry's seventh grade paper. Amazing what one forgets over the years --

• that Anne Carson the poet is very weird and very wonderful. I heard her last night at the Masonic Lodge in the Hollywood Forever cemetery. In lieu of describing the whole scene, I'll just say that we parked our car in the graveyard, noted the graves of Issac and Anna, both born in the late 1800s and both dead within a year of each other in the 1950s, and walked down a long, very dark road to the Lodge that was filled with very young and glamorous literary types, an odd sight in Los Angeles and somehow heartening. As for the cemetery, Johnny Ramone is buried there, along with Jayne Mansfield and Bugsy Siegel. The list is long and again, it's a strange and wonderful place.

Local Cookbook Signing

I think one of the last independent bookstores in the universe is in my neighborhood, and it's one of my favorite places in Los Angeles. Given my book nerdiness, and the expertise of the men and women who work at Chevalier's, I never leave the place without purchasing one or two or three new books to add to my already groaning shelves. The cookbook section is especially amazing, filled with both the usual bestselling cookbooks and the sublimely esoteric.

If you're in Los Angeles this weekend and next, I want to encourage you to attend two signings of two new and fabulous cookbooks.

The first is called Made in America: Our Best Chefs Reinvent Comfort Food by Lucy Lean. I flipped through it the other day and practically started salivating. A press release says this: as representing the entire United States, chefs have been selected for their accomplishments, talent, and focus on local and sustainable cooking. From Ludo Lefebvre’s Duck-Fat-Fried Chicken with Piquillos Ketchup to Alain Ducasse’s Gratinéed French Onion Soup to Mario Batali’s Pappardelle Bolognese to John Besh’s Jumbo Louisiana Shrimp to April Bloomfield’s Spicy Ginger Whoopie Pies, Made in America showcases our favorite dishes as conceived by our finest chefs.


Lucy will be signing copies of her book at Chevalier's this Sunday, October 9th from 12:00 until 2:00. 

The second book signing that I want to promote at Chevalier's happens on Sunday, October 16th from 10:00 to 11:00 in the morning. The famous chef and baker extraordinaire Nancy Silverton will be signing her new cookbook, The Mozza Cookbook: Recipes from Los Angeles' Favorite Italian Restaurant and Pizzeria. Silverton is the creator of the original La Brea Bakery, and if you've never tried any of her food, you don't know what you're missing!




I urge any of you Angelenos who are around this Sunday or next to come out and support Chevalier's Books and these superlative cookbooks. You can grab a coffee on Larchmont, go to the wonderful farmer's market and stop by Chevalier's to get a great gift for yourself or friends. When you cook from the books, you'll be supporting independent bookstores, too!

Books

I'm finishing up John Updike's self-professed "favorite book I've written" The Centaur. It's weird, weird, weird and very wonderful. I bought a second edition for $22.00 at a fabulous bookstore in Venice (that's Beach, not Italy), so it has that crinkly cover and smells good. I've come to John Updike and fallen in love late in life, I think, for someone who considers herself pretty damn well-read. The novels of Updike that I've read are so of their time, of the social mores of the forties through the seventies, and the awful banality of work and marriage, the onset of corporate culture and concomitant loss of identity. Some would say they're misogynistic in tone and the women aren't completely fleshed out, but I'm seduced by the language, the old-fashioned style of it, the craft and industry that appears effortless. There's a hardness to the male intellect in these books that I'm drawn to right now in my life -- but...

when I'm finished I'm dashing out to Chevalier's (see my sidebar for the link) to pick up a copy of Lorrie Moore's new novel, the first in eleven years! I came to Lorrie Moore when I lived in New York City and read her short story "People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk" in The New Yorker. Sophie had already been diagnosed when I read it, a story of a small boy who has cancer and the wry, devastated voice of his mother telling it, and I was so taken by it that I ripped it out of the magazine and carried it around with me for years. It became a touchstone of sorts, something that I referred to over and over as I navigated our own treacherous journey. It sits, now, in a folder in my file cabinet, dog-eared and thin, the file marked "Important Articles." The short story went on to win an O.Henry prize, I believe, and then appeared in Moore's last published book Birds of America. The new novel is something I can happily (albeit nerdily) say that I've anticipated for a long time!

All this....just because. It's not ALL FIRES, ALL HELLFIRE and ALL GO TO HELL around here ALL THE TIME!

Book Signing

Today was my very first official book-signing. I don't have A Book, technically, but I do have an essay in an anthology that is an actual book. And my local bookstore, Chevalier's (see sidebar for a link!), was kind enough to allow me a morning to sit amongst books and sign copies of A Cup of Comfort for Parents of Children with Special Needs. Thank you, Liz and Sue and Norman and Filis.

Many of my good friends came, the women who support and love me through everything. Thank you so much, dear women. I love you.

And others came, as well. One man grabbed a few goodies to eat (made by The Husband at The Larchmont Larder) and said, as he walked out the door, his mouth full I don't have one of those and he nodded his head toward the book. Meaning, not the book, but the special needs kid.

Lucky, you! I called after him, but I didn't really mean it.

I'm so very lucky, actually. Lucky in friends, lucky to have gone down a path that I never knew existed, lucky to have turned out all right despite the thickness and darkness of that path.

And guess who was in the next room, evidently cut from the same cloth as her bookworm mother?