For My Part

“For my part, even at my then early age (and ever since), I preferred those of any church or creed that could be religious without becoming professional or doing a lockstep.”

— William S. Hart in My Life East and West (1903)

More Book Art

One of those rare marriages of literary and artistic talent creating a book I will never be able to afford.

Thank You

“I’m learning to love and appreciate each thing for what it is. In the end, be careful to do what you are best at doing and wait for the wheel to turn to you.”

— Kim Parent

Dogs & Sleep

“Here is some of what I have found in my bed: mulch, grass, leaves, tiny little black things that seem (thank God) inanimate, brownish streaks I don’t want to examine, feathers, twigs, gravel, muddy paw prints, and plain dirt. I never look closely anymore; I assume the worst…

“I used to feel about king-size beds the way I do about Hummers and private jets and granite countertops, but over the past seven years I gained three dogs and thirty pounds, and my old bed, a humble queen, just didn’t cut it anymore. It was either lose the the weight, lose the dogs, or buy something bigger. King-size is what I needed, and king-size is what I got.”

— Abigail Thomas in “Sleeping with Dogs on a King-Size Bed” in Woof!: Writers on Dogs (2008), edited by Lee Montgomery

Taking Notes

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in a way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”

— Joan Didion in “On Keeping a Notebook” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1966)

Zane Grey

The covers of westerns are fun, too. I remember reading a Zane Grey novel while at Camp Becket in the Berkshires. The library was over the boathouse, and the books, most from the 1920s and 1930s, smelled like the lake and old paper, made to be read by flashlight in a bunk-bed while creatures rustled outside in the deep forest night.

Never Intended

“I was never intended for a job like this. I realize it more and more every day, but I will stick it out till I break down. To be nervous, over-imaginative, terribly sensitive to suffering, is a poor equipment for the man who starts out to drive wounded on the battlefield. I am haunted by the thought that my car may break down when I have a load of wounded. Once indeed it did, and a man died while I waited for help. Now I never look at what is given me. It might unnerve me.

“I have been at it for over six months without a rest. When an attack has been going on I have worked day and night, until as I drove I wanted to fall asleep at the wheel.

“The winter has been trying; there is rain one day, frost the next. Mud is up to the axles. One sleeps in lousy barns or dripping dugouts. Cold, hunger, dirt. I know them all singly and together. My only consolation is that the war must soon be over, and that I will have helped. When I have time and am not too tired, I comfort myself with scribbling.”

— Robert Service, circa 1915, while driving ambulances in World War I, in Ballads of a Bohemian (1921)

George & Harrison

Harrison Fisher, illustrator, and George Barr McCutcheon, author, complemented each other so perfectly. Like Hunter Thompson and Ralph Steadman, only in a gentler way.

The Flyers

For years I collected books by George Barr McCutcheon, mostly for the covers which were always magnificent. The Flyers (1907) includes an illustration by Harrison Fisher (1875-1934) in a cover designed by Theodore B. Hapgood (1871-1938).

If you enjoy the art of the book, I highly recommend “Art Bound,” an online exhibit prepared by the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, in collaboration with the Philadelphia Center for the Book.

Roland, a Hero Critiqued

“Roland of Altenburg was one of those hereditary princelings of small German principalities who have figured so numerously in latter-day story. Travelling, incognito, he fell in love with a New York girl whose father and fiancé interfered. Personally, we think that they had reason on their side, but the author and Prince Roland scorned them. Recalled to his toy kingdom by the call of duty, Roland grieves royally until the American fair one, the fiancé and a shadowy chaperon obligingly visit Altenburg. Then come exciting, if somewhat illogical, events; and in the end, Edward Mott Woolley, more merciful than most of his confrères, allows his loyal hero to chloroform his sense of duty and make Miss Katherine Barrington of New York, Princess of Altenburg. Readers who have acquired the ‘Prisoner of Zenda’ habit will doubtless read the story with enjoyment.”

— Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd reviewing Edward Mott Woolley’s Roland of Altenburg in “Current Fiction,” The Lamp: A Review and Record of Current Literature by Charles Scribner’s Sons, August 1904