IN LONDON

BOOK BUYING
London
The best book buying deals in Britain are on-line. (A shameless plug for Philabooks|Booksellers). But when I'm replenishing my inventory, which I often do in London because of the ready availability of titles that suit my customers' tastes, I go for remainders.

As is the case in strictly used bookshops in America, discounts in similar London versions are usually no great bargain. (Overhead, etc.) I buy only when I make what I call 'a love connection.' In other words, a book I must have. The used bookshops I like best are in British Museum area.  

My favourite remainder spot is South Kensington Bookshop, in South Ken's museum district and French enclave. (It's located in the building complex attached to the South Kensington tube stop). Great titles, many just a year or two old, are be had up to fifty percent off list prices. At times, even greater discounts can be sighted. 

The shop seems to be open 'round the clock. At least, whenever I pop in. Service is pleasant and efficient. Highly recommended!

There was another remainder bookshop I used to go to, in Victoria directly across the south side of the station. It used to be a double hit, since I'd also visit the old Politico bookshop, off Victoria Street. (Long gone). Don't remember the name of this Victoria Station shop, and I'm wondering if it's still there. (Memo to self: Check it out on next buying trip).

Meantime, if you follow Philabooks at amazon.com, you'll see some new titles I've just listed. Or, go to PhilabooksBooksellers.blogspot.com. Call 1.215.385.3512 for even speedier service.
-- Richard Carreño

PIP, PIP!

Pure Literature,
Purer Enjoyment
Purity is high literary achievement, although, admittedly, not great literature. It is a complex ganglia of characterizations that speak to our time, unravelling the complexities of our Internet age in narrative form.

                                Oprah would hate it. I loved it. You should read it. You'll then know why Jonathan Franzen is America's best 21st century contemporary novelist. In fact, he well be the Charles Dickens of our era. -- Hotspur for The Philadelphia Junto.

The PJ depends exclusively on reader support. Please help us continue by contributing directly via PayPal, or by contributing editorial content via PhiladelphiaJunto@ymail.com. Empowered by WritersClearinghouse | S.P.Q.R. 1976 Richard Carreño, Editor Copyright MMXV. All Rights Reserved

John O'Hara Remembered



'Oh yeah, let's take this outside.'

 Norman Mailer almost killed one of his wives. John O'Hara, when besotted by drink, was no gentleman. But in today's lit'ry circles, Mailer often gets a pass. O'Hara never does. Get to meet 'the Master of the Fancied Slight,' as O'Hara was known, in the following brilliant new dissection of the author's life by Charles F. McElwee III.  

 TOUCHY, TOUCHY
BY CHARLES F. McELWEE III
[SPECIAL TO WITERSCLEARINGHOUSE NEWS SERVICE]
John O'Hara wanted acceptance, but acceptance required penance. The author's acerbic, self-destructive personality limited the accolades and tributes he demanded. O'Hara had too many enemies, and he added many in his exhausting life. An Olympian grudge holder, O'Hara routinely blacklisted friends for no particular reason.

 

He was a brawler, a boozer and a blowhard - the holy trinity of a jerk. Bars were O'Hara's boxing rings, and he slugged and rumbled at negligible or imagined provocations. He threw fists at a dwarf in New York's "21" Club, only to be knocked down by another dwarf who joined the fight. He even smacked a woman for a tardy lunch arrival. The high society O'Hara craved loathed him for his alcohol-soaked brutality. Everyone knew him as "a master of the fancied slight." 

 

On Paper By Nicholas A. Basbanes

The author, right, with Jackie, left

 ON THE PAPER TRAIL
BY JACKIE ATKINS
[WRITERSCLEARINGHOUSE NEWS SERVICE]

Our birth in the world is heralded officially by a small document proclaiming the date, our weight, sex, and parentage. Our death is on notice to the same world by a certificate which states date, more names, and sex. Each milestone in our lives, the graduations, marriages, divorces, driver’s licenses are decreed on other pieces we can hold, show, and offer as proof of our time on earth. Records may also be kept in vast caverns of data banks, but it is those which we can hold in our hands, which we store in our cabinets, and hold close to our hearts that trumpet our own special indenture, our enduring allegiance to paper.

 

Nicholas A. Basbanes, an investigative reporter, respected book critic, and renowned author of eight previous books on literary matters has decided to put a face on the pages of time, the immutable tablet of scribes, artists, and bean counters of our current and past civilizations.

From the Novel

Please Call Me Servant


By MILENA ODA

Part I
My Name is Servant

My name is Servant.

I respectfully request you to address me as Servant; I am Servant, and am called Servant. An individual does not, as people imagine, require a first and second name. My name is Servant. When people persist in asking, ‘What is your Christian name, your surname?’, I turn away and decline to listen. The ladies and gentlemen refuse to grasp this? How else should servants indicate their servant status? They are astonished, shake their heads, regard me and still will not understand. ‘I cannot assist you with an answer sir.’ They ask me again, trying to unnerve me. ‘Your name is Steven Servant?’ No, my name is Servant. I have no answer to questions such as ‘Why do you call yourself Servant?’ That I must hear words such as ‘unfortunate’ and ‘pitiable’, and continually point out my vocation, pains me. You do not see a Servant? You have not noticed my resplendent livery? People rely on patterns, and if they are missing, the world dims around them. Servant is neither a Christian name, nor a surname; my name might have been Footman, Valet or Right-Hand Man. I could also be called Aide, Adjunct, Attendant or Retainer, but no word better describes my character, always ready to serve, than Servant. I have always been the quiet accompaniment to the loud melody: chestnut seller, newspaper deliverer, keeper at the artillery museum, porter, doorman. I began as a lackey and I wish to finish as one.

The fetters of selflessness and self-effacement are what entice me to servile submission and bondage. My sense of self is not self-sufficient (a servant’s sense of self) and therefore I cannot and will not live in liberty. I cannot bear a second of freedom. I steer clear of everything that is free, from every free feeling. I panic when I don’t know what I have to do. I can only do what is required of me. I wish to be released from the burden of individuality, of the free self. I willingly put myself on a lead. I want to be available to my master day and night like an object, for the master is incapable of basic tasks, and only the Servant can fulfil them for him, only he wants to. The Servant is air, his master’s air; he needs it to breathe. Only a good master knows how to treat the servant; if you wish to show your Servant consideration you must allow him to feel your superiority and you must never release him from your sphere of influence.

I am always dressed in my livery (except during my morning and evening ablutions) so I believe no-one has any reason (any more) to call me Leonard. I require a lengthy pause for breath when I hear the word ‘Leonard’ or must speak it out loud myself. If I deliberately refer to myself as Leonard, it means I wish to leave a long, deep scar on my body. I have to leave something, someone indeed, who I would like... so I speak disparagingly about myself too. There really is no-one left to whom I am Leonard. And certainly not when I face someone in my livery. I stand before him in my livery and call him, ‘my master’! He knows full well what it means – to me – to wait patiently by someone with the obedient composure of a servant.

I adhere to the old-fashioned values of a traditional English servant. I am the embodiment of this century’s most courteous courtier’s most refined servility. The searching gaze of my widely-spaced eyes betrays my congenital subservience. ‘Alongside your utter subservience there’s also a certain honesty in your plucky little boss-eyed face’, the motherly one used to tease me. My eyes are watery and bulge out. I have slight hydrocephalus, with a broad but well-formed forehead and protruding ears. My mother called me ‘my baboon’. I have large ears – an unmistakable sign of a congenital developmental disorder. My pigment-free hair points to a serious degeneracy. Nature made me ugly. When I speak I reveal a crevice between my two front teeth. When I am forced to speak I think of this repugnant gap; ideally I would prefer to communicate through sign language. I stutter, even when I have to say hello or goodbye. Simply uttering words such as good day or good evening is difficult. I have no desire to wish anyone, except for my master, a good day or a good evening. It is required of the Servant that he exchange words only with his master, greeting him only. Any attempt to bring me to speak has a crushing effect on me. My stutter results in a strange, wilful restriction on attempts to make contact. I consciously seek to maintain distance from anyone who is not interested in me as a Servant. I only like to serve in company where I can be of obedient service. I am then serving my soul, cherishing my servant psyche.

In the morning I look in the tiny mirror with one eye closed, in order not to see more than my chin and jaw while shaving. Leonard never looks in the large mirror when he is naked. Only the naked man is called Leonard. How unfit to live this Leonard is. I abhor Leonard’s degenerate masculinity. A hideous individual. I would be overcome by a ghastly angst if forced to see myself without my livery. I detest the innate asymmetry of my body. It is ten years since I last saw my deformed frame entirely naked in a mirror. It would be with pain and embarrassment, that I would suffer the sight of this grotesque body. If I saw myself naked, I would beat and tear and hate myself. Leonard’s naked, ugly physicality is a mixture of the ridiculous and the merciless; nature was making a joke at his expense when she begat him. How damned similar he is to a poor cripple in every detail of his own wounded, malformed appearance! How disgusting to be like such people! I am a precisely copy. A vile hound. This debased, naked Leonard barks helpless on his lead.

If I put on my finest livery and pull on the exquisite white silken gloves, the bland individual Leonard becomes a snappy, dapper servant. Then I stand in front of the tall mirror and admire the allure of the attractive Servant before me. What release: an unleashed dog’s euphoric cry. At these moments each morning, when I see myself in the mirror in the delightful livery I witness a style experience, feel a sense of joy. I begin my service with refreshed courage and resolve.

And I do not answer the question, ‘why do you wear your livery outside of your working hours?’ I remain silent, in line with Rule 8. I, the Servant, wear livery day and night, and this livery is my skin, my I. The livery allows me to call myself I, affords a status of noble refinement. It is the highest honour to me, to wear the livery constantly, and to be clothed in it in the presence of a master. This is dictated by the most important rule, Rule 1.

My Serving Rules
My rules are my be-all and end-all, my religion. Every day is shaped by my Master’s needs and instructions. I examine his (my) list of instructions and amend it with the latest orders. Every day I practice the instructions I have not fully mastered. I reflect on each new instruction he gives me and thus determine new rules; I am not permitted to miss a day. When my master commends me with words such as ‘praiseworthy’ or ‘admirable’, the childish Servant is delighted. Only thing only matters to the noble Servant: every action I carry out must be marked by ceremonious, perfect execution, and performed flawlessly.

My rules and principles govern myself and my behaviour. I do nothing which does not appear in my serving rules. I am the Servant the rules are to guide, therefore nothing can go askew, nor should it ever. I believe in a regulated service. Only thanks to the serving rules (and the Servant’s nature) can I achieve truly perfect service. My daily engagement with the intricacies of my rules fills me with satisfaction; I continually practice my rules, with stony rigidity, and expand them as necessary. They award my servant’s soul with a soothing sense of gratification. Every regulation I have devised receives a privileged place in my book of rules. I strive never to break a rule. The rules are my law, guaranteeing respectability and order and honouring these ideals.

Rule 1: My name is Servant. I serve with restrained zeal and composure and I always wear (clean) livery.

In accordance with Rule 1, I wish to wear the livery, my grand and glorious livery, all the time (the lowly one allows himself to stipulate this condition), even in sleep, because like the dog I am a creature of the day and the night, cheerful and loyal throughout both, ready to leap up at any moment and serve in my livery. I do not wish to wear everyday clothes. What oppressive desolation, master, if you allow me to serve in civilian, normal clothing! I am not lonely however; I have a master and belong to the fraternity of the servants, although they have not accepted me, despite my achievements. What worth, what dignity this livery lends me!

I have hung a sign on the wall in each of my rooms: As servant in the livery I feel I am a substantial and valuable I, heeding his duties and in his livery always prepared to stand in the service of the other, doggedly loyal and obedient! I repeat: I feel better in uniform than in civilian clothing. I hate normal trousers, normal pullovers. I suffocate. I suffer from a bacterial allergy when I have to wear normal clothes! My livery is the completion of myself! ‘The English servants also wear their livery at all times, within as well as outside of The Palace.’ On the streets, accusing bystanders ask ‘why such embarrassing extravagance?’ What impertinent lines of inquiry some strangers follow. Their questions make me both furious and fearful. I cannot be of service to you with an answer sir, I say. Or I remain silent and walk proudly and loftily on in my going-out livery. I do not wish to justify myself before any man. Their curiosity does not touch my heart, my servant’s heart; I do not wish to be Leonard again, not in the slightest. The normal majority of people do not understand me and my skills, and what it means to me to appear before them as the finest of servants.

If only I had been born in one of the wonderful lands of servants! There, no-one shakes their heads in amazement when I project the image of an assiduous servant in my livery – and call myself Servant. There they really understand the servant’s soul.

Milena Oda (www.milenaoda.com) lives in Berlin. This is an excerpt from her three-part novel, originally published German as NENNEN SIE MICH DIENER by VERLAG SCHUMACHERGEBLER, Dresden (www.verlag.schumachergebler.de). Translated by Steph Morris, Berlin.

Don Francisco National Treasure

 Without Mobiles and Table Napkins,
Chile Eases into New Age

By Richard Carreño
[Writers Clearinghouse News Service]
Santiago, Chile
Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda.
Author Isabel Allende.
Chilean and South American 'liberatador' Bernardo O'Higgins.
President and freedom fighter Salavador Allende.
President and labour champion Eduardo Frei.
Michelle Bachelet, the first democraticaly-elected female president in South America.

That was then.

In the new Chile, South America's and the world's southern-most country (and, yes, pepper-shaped), the biggest name on the national stage today is none other than native-born Mario Luis Kreutzberger. Mario, who?

To world-wide Hispanic television audiences, that would be, of course, mega-personality 'Don Francisco,' the loud-mouth, blow-hard host of El Sabado Gigante, the hugely popular weekly TV variety show that blankets Latin America from its Miami-based production home like a mushy Ricky Martin singing tour.

The show? Think I-Love-Lucy-'Honey,-I'm-Home-humour combined with curvaceous, pulchritudinous young women in tight frocks. And the somewhat tawdry, salacious over-the-hill El Don as leering jefe-in-chief. But Chilean? Who knew?

For me, not until earlier this month when my mountain-climbing son Justin (he was en route to an Argentine peak) and I visted, on a late spring sojourn, this capital city, Santiago de Chile; Valparaiso, the country's historic Pacific port city; and Vina del Mar, a Pacific beach resort easily likened to the best of Cote d'Azur playlands. (Mid-day temperatures hovered in the 80s). I had always pegged the paunchy 70-year-old El Don as Mexican, as Dominican, even as Cuban, at best. But hardly someone who would mirror the European beau ideal tipo who personifies the suave Chilean caballero.

'Chil-lay,' a land that stretches rubber band thin from Peru in the north to Cape Horn in the south, is, as they say, a study in contrasts. And shares an eerie unanimity. Its citizens, united by a semi-official national slogan, 'Chile. Un Solo Corazon' ('Chile. A Single Heart'), practice a kind navel-gazing solipsism that's almost an art form. Never mind the national obsession with fast food. (More on these topics later).

In all, consider this place a modern, 21st-century enigma: A country hamstrung by a curious history of banana republic turbulence and the physic powers of geographic isolation. (By land, the Andes virtually landlock the country).

Mostly, Chile is a nation that the rest of world hardly ever sees -- unless there's an occasional mining disaster (even the recent month-long epic hardly made a dent in international perceptions or understanding); the unfortunate trope of a strong-man dictator overthrowing democracy (the late General Augusto Pinochet and his military thugs deposing President Allende in 1973); or the infrequent recognition of its literary stature by a faraway country such as Sweden (Neruda's laureate in 1971).

Still, Chile is also a place which prides itself on its strong Spanish colonial patrimony and deep European roots. Immigrants, many from Germany, France, and Italy, flowed into the country in the 19th century when Valparaiso was South America's chief Pacific port city. European Jews came later -- in the diaspora fostered by fears of Nazi terror.

Local arts are also flourishing, including opera, theatre, and symphony, all offered at the Teatro Municipal, and all, oddly, short of world-class stature. Polo, as is the case in neighbouring Argentina, also has a strong following.

Among these strengths, the Museo de Bellas Artes is a stunning disappointment. Though housed in an elegant early 20th-century beaux arts building, the museum's collection is thin and badly curated. (A current exhibit of photographs is, in a de facto way, even 'curated' by the German government. The show, by German photographers, has been mounted by Goethe House, a government cultural agency. How lazy is that?)

Santiago, with a head count of about 5 million, a whopping third of Chile's total population, can tout affluent self-confidence, architectural vigour, and historical grandeur. Since its founding in 1541 by Conquistador Pedro de Valdiva, Santiago has grown from a outpost of Spanish conquest to the dynamic high-rise city of today. Meantime, aligned with Buenos Aires, Argentina, it has become the regional transportation hub of this part of the southern hemisphere.

The city's public transportation system, marked by a sprawling bus and subway system, is arguably Latin America's best. Its rubber-wheeled subway, or Metro, is the continent's largest in number of daily passengers (2.4-million) and in the size of its network -- and it rivals any similar system worldwide.

Getting around is equally safe, efficient, and cheap (an adult one-way Metro fare is about $1), and its 101 stations easily access top spots for visitors (the Moneda, the presidential palace where Salvadore Allende shot himself rather than surrender to Pinochet); the Plaza de Armas, the chief urban square; Santa Lucia, spectacular urban gardens overlooking the city; and the Biblioteca National which, unlike the Museo de Bellas Artes, gets it right.

Innovation is also a hallmark. Metro cars are not self-contained tubes, divided by sliding doors connecting car to car. Rather than this industry standard, the norm in North America and Europe, carriages are open-ended through the total length of the train length, on average about 10 cars. However shameless, even Metro's advertising has flare: Some entire trains are shrink-wrapped. The train I caught on several occasions was the Coca-Cola special. Even all interior ads were for Coke.

Stations, many decorated with art, are spotless.

Not surprising, in that all public spaces in Santiago are groomed, pruned, and immaculate. The city even deploys street cleaners whose duties include chipping away gum embedded in pavements.

For Americans, life in Chile provides an added bonus: Chile is one of the few countries where the American greenback is strong, about 500 pesos to the dollar. The result, even for a skint writer like myself, is that, in Chile, I'm a 'millionaire.'


Yet, despite all of Chile's virtues, there is also something sadly evocative about a national character that embraces the buffoonish Don Francisco, a caricature in himself, as a national model. Francisco is a pervasive advertising fixture, barking everything from a mobile phone company, to a home products chain, to the maker of feminine products. Most telling is Don Francisco's role as the host of the nation's annual televised telethon on behalf of handicapped children. His face is plastered on posters throughout the country, ostensibly promoting the 'teleton.'


No doubt, Francisco's role -- something like that of Jerry Lewis and his Labor Day telethon in the United States -- is a selfless act. But there's also a kind of huckerism associated with the teleton. Even an unseemly festive air surrounding it, as was the case for 48 hours earlier this month, when Francisco and other personalities tugged at the national heartstrings as they sang, danced, and pleaded for donations. Even President Sebastian Pinera, a US dollar billionaire, showed up. He gave a speech. "If not now, when? If not us, who?' (For real. He said that).

The teleton is almost a national obsession, underscoring what I and others I spoke with agreed is a kind of inwardness shared by the nation at large. For two days, Christmas was trumped. A pending strike by Metro workers was thrust off the front pages. Never mind international news. Other than for sports, overseas events get little coverage. CNN is Chile based. Fox is Chile based. During teleton days, both networks were all Don Francisco all the time.

'Chileans are very self-centred,' an Australian educator, in Chile for almost two years, told me. 'To them, Chile isn't part of South America. There's Chile and there's South America.'

In small measures and in significant ways, Chileans -- despite their seeming refinement -- seem to be a people myopic to a larger world. Though diverse in ethnic and racial makeup, hardly any native -- even in the capital of Santiago and in a tourist town like Vina del Mar -- speaks English. My hotel concierge was hard-pressed to do 'Good Morning,' much less offer directions in any comprehensible form of English. Picture Indiana with palm trees.


As remarkable, during my week-long stay, I spotted only about a half-dozen native English-speakers. Maybe. Though I had many conversations and interviews, I had only one in English, with that Australian educator, who I had simply bumped into at a Starbucks near my hotel.

Worse, newspapers and magazines on newsstands are all Chilean.

By now it's a cliche that everyone reads news on the Internet. Yet, there's something unsettling, especially for a newspaper reader of my -- er, older -- generation, about being in a huge capital city (in many ways so otherwise cosmopolitan) with the public reading habits of Akron, Ohio.

Until Santiago, I'd yet to be any Western capital where the International Herald-Tribune wasn't on offer. Moreover, this homey journalistic orientation didn't just exclude Anglophone publications. As far as I could tell, even Argentine and Spanish periodicals don't see daylight.

What this means for political discussion and rivalry in the marketplace of ideas is less than sanguine. I found only one political satire weekly, The Clinic, on newsstands. (It was named sardonically, in English, after The Clinic, a English rehab institution which was Pinochet's home away from home while the British government diddled with his deportation status).

In fact, 20 years on since the rebirth of democracy here, there still seems to be low-grade tolerance of, if not for the overt apparatus of an authoritarian state, at least for some of its trappings. The brown-uniformed Carabineros of Chile, the national police force that had been a bedrock element in the Pinochet junta, still provide an uncomfortable -- even a menacing --presence, something akin to that intangible, creepy feeling that Franco's Guardia Civil used to exude in Spain.

It's not surprising, given the country's singularly mono-linguistic emphasis, that governmental and commercial efforts to accommodate a polyglot tourism base range from slim to none. The main tourism office is located in upmarket eastern barrio, Providencia. (Something like Beverly Hills, with pedestrians). No tourist materials are in sight, however. One requests maps, etc. A satellite, yes, satellite, office, located downtown at the Plaza de Armas, doesn't even stock the maps. A tour I wanted to join had been canceled.

Moreover, it took almost three days of poking about before I found a shop offering time-honoured tourist gear. (A 'I Love Chile' t-shirt and the like).

It took me less than a day to realise that something was horribly wrong when I waded through the mid-day throngs around the Plaza de Armas. Young women were actually talking to each other. Businessmen actually seemed to go to lunch appointments to converse. In other words, also welcome to a world where the mobile phone still has not conquered all.

I never did find anything approaching a decent shopping street, a Fifth Avenue or Walnut Street, say, anywhere in centre city. (There is a Brooks Brothers branch in a mall in Las Condes, a swank neighbourhood of gated communities and villas on the city's eastern outskirts).

What's even more remarkable in a city of 5 million - and a Latin one, as well -- is that restaurants are hard to find. Proper restaurants. With tablecloths. Offering three-course meals. Virtually all restos are fast-food joints, ranging from McDonalds, to home-grown variants like The Coffee Factory, to fast-food dives that just so happen to have waiters. (Piccolo Italia was one of these).

Highlighting Chilean dining is another peculiarity -- no linen napkins. All restaurants -- that is, all restaurants -- provide only paper servilletas, the size of cocktail napkins. If you're like me, figure on about 10 of these for a typical meal. Or, as some foreigners are said to do, bring your own 'linen' napkin when eating out.

I can disspell the truth of one Chilean habit, the country's alledged addiction to instant coffee, particularly the Nescafe brand. I read this 'fact,' in a reputable, widely-circulated guide, while inflight from Panama, and I was instantly levitated from my stupor. 'When ordering coffee,' we first-time visitors were told, 'order the real thing by emphasising, "cafe, cafe" Otherwise, you'll probably be served wind up with Nescafe.'

True, I spent most of my coffee-drinking time at my nearby Starbucks (free WiFi). But even on my excursions to local cafeterias, mostly around the Plaza de Armas, I got the real deal. The exception: My four-star hotel, where my continental breakfast delivered by room service each morning featured Nescafe. (By the way, the hotel's WiFi cost a price-gouging $17 per day. Whither, Starbucks).
I finally figured it out. The Chileans don't really care. They didn't care whether I was a happy camper, or not. And they don't really care if you or any other norte americano tourist eventually shows up.

I should've known that as soon as I touched down at Santiago's Arturo Merino Benitz International Airport. Even before passport control and customs, I was steered to darkened area off to little-used area where I had to pay the tax, a $142 entrance fee. Cash, in dollars, would do nicely, I was told.

Does everyone pay? Not exactly. I could see why the Albanians might be targeted. It was a harmless gesture; they wouldn't be chartering planeloads anytime soon. Americans? Of course. Goes without saying. But Canadians! What in God's name had the Canadians done to bring down the wrath of the Chilean people?

Kindling

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Books Received

Not That Kind of Girl, By Carlene Bauer
HarperCollins
304 pp/$26.99/Hardcover

According to the publishers:
Choosing virginity over safe sex, and the Bible over The Bonfire of the Vanities, author Carlene Bauer spent her youth and young adulthood as a seemingly protypical, extremely religious good girl. Noe in her memoir, Bauer ventures far beyond stereotypes and dogmas into richly orginial terrain, charting her journey to figure out the kind of woman she should become and the role her faith should play in that evolution. What emerges is a whip-smart, refreshingly comic account that will resonate with anyone who has ever wrestled with matters of belief, identity, or self-discovery.

(To see your book, newly published or not, in a mini-review in 'Books Received' please contact Junto's Book Editor at PhiladelphiaJunt@ymail.com. Certain books, particularly those centering on Junto's core interests, will be selected for full reviews. If you wish to a Junto book reviewer, also advise the Book Editing, citing your experience and exptertise).

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Sidney Zion RIP

Sidney Zion, crusader to cut doctors' hours, dies at 75 By ROBERT D. MCFADDEN, New York Times First published in print: Tuesday, August 4, 2009 NEW YORK -- Sidney Zion, a journalist and author who turned his daughter's death at New York Hospital in 1984 into a crusade that led to national reforms in the training, workload and supervision of young doctors, died Sunday afternoon at Calvary Hospital in Brooklyn. He was 75 and lived in Manhattan. The cause was bladder cancer, said his son Adam Zion. A confidant of writers and power brokers in New York, Zion was a federal prosecutor and criminal lawyer early in a many-sided career that included jobs as a legal reporter for The New York Times and columnist for The Daily News and The New York Post. He helped found a magazine and wrote a novel, a book on gangsters, a volume of essays and a biography of the lawyer Roy Cohn. Rumpled and Runyonesque, a habitue of Gallagher's, Elaine's, Sardi's and other celebrity watering holes, Zion was a loud, cigar-smoking, storytelling die-hard New York Giants fan who railed against what he called fitness fascists, passionately defended Israel and counted horse-players, mobsters, actors and politicians among his friends. But his life was transformed on the night of March 4, 1984, when his 18-year-old daughter, Libby, a Bennington College freshman with a history of depression and cocaine use, was admitted to New York Hospital with fever, chills and agitation. Her condition was not diagnosed, but two interns gave her a painkiller and sedative, a plan approved by phone by a senior clinician who had treated members of the family, and Zion was tied down to prevent injury. She died eight hours after admission. The case raised troubling questions about the long hours and workloads of interns and residents in teaching hospitals, and about their supervision and the prevention of medical errors. Zion, then a columnist for The Daily News, and his wife, Elsa, a city official and former publishing executive, sued the hospital and four doctors, charging gross negligence in their daughter's death. They also campaigned for greater supervision and workload limits on interns and residents, who often put in 100 to 120 hours a week and 36 at a stretch. The case generated newspaper and magazine articles, television specials, an intense debate in the medical community and a book, "The Girl Who Died Twice" (1995), by Natalie Robins. In 1987, a grand jury rejected medical "murder" charges that Zion had called for, but said hospital errors may have contributed to the death. The hospital admitted some errors and was fined $13,000 by the state Health Department. In 1989, the state limited interns and residents to 80 hours weekly and 24 hours consecutively, and said senior doctors must be in hospitals at all times. Similar standards were mandated nationally in 2003 by a council that accredits graduate medical schools.

Authors @ Large

Junto Photos/Richard Carreño

B&N Honours Authors in Mural Series

These murals, pictured here, are found in the Barnes and Nobles bookshop at Rittenhouse Square.

(From top, Hardy; GBS; Orwell, Nabokov, Joyce; Steinbeck, Elliot).

At The Library Company

Junto Photo/Richard Carreño

Poe-Boy

Ed Pettit, English professor at LaSalle University, delivered brilliant insight in the world of Philadelphia Gothic literature, including the works of Edgar Allan Poe, on 19 February at the Library Company, Philadelphia. Poe, who spent much of his most creative period in Philadelphia, was born 200 years ago this year. Pettit's lecture was held in conjunction with the Library Company's exhibition, 'Philadelphia Gothic: Murders, Mysteries, Monsters, and Mayhem Inspire American Literature, 1798-1854.'

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Big Bagel II

Two Meetings; One Club

Photographs, above, snapped in New York last Wednesday.

Top: A talk on a collection of Americana on sale at Bauman Rare Books, 535 Madison Avenue. Outstanding material. I was particularly attracted to an early New York State edition of Thomas Paine's Common Sense, which I believe most people know was first published in Philadelphia. (There's a Pennsylvania blue plaque noting the site in Old City). Bauman's copy runs $52,000. Thanks. But I'll make do with my edition, a Dover Thift Edition, purchased for $1. OK, plus tax, a tariff that most certainly would have had Tom despair, 'These are the times that try men's soul.'

Bauman, incidentally, is something akin to what Maggs is in London. Quite upscale, but not as snooty as Maggs. Tom woould have liked that, too. Bauman's head office is in Philadelphia.

Next: The American Museum of Natural History, maybe? Actually, it's the Harvard Club, on West 44th Street, off Fifth. But there is a connextion to the Museum. Many of the mounted game heads at the club were bagged by the noted sportsman Teddy Roosevelt. Whether these two specimens were nailed by Roosevelt, I don't know.

Next: Club scenes.

Next: The 209th Annual General Meeting of The St. George's Society of New York, held that evening at the club.

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Barnes-storming the Arts

Clive Barnes, R.I.P.

By Richard Carreño

Junto Staff Writer

Clive Barnes, the great arts critic, was smart, generous -- and tolerant of callow youth. Callow youth, as in me.

I knew -- I mean, I was acquainted -- with Barnes in the late 60s, when I serving out the remainder of my sentence as an undergraduate at New York University. And I was fortunate enough to have Barnes as a lecturer in course on film critiquing. Movie reviews, and the like. (This, needless to say, was the Golden Age of extraneous electives). Despite his self-effacing, disheveled manner, Barnes was a fierce critic with sharp wit. And, like I said, he was generous.

At the time, I sort of fancied myself as a film boffin. I was writing reviews for some fledgling periodicals in Paris and in New York, and, woe to anyone who thought he/she knew more about Jean-Luc Godard and the Nouvelle Vague. In other words, a puffed up jerk. Callow youth, anyone?

Still, Barnes regularly gave my reviews of New York's current cinema scene high B's and low A's, marks that were certainly well above my academic pay grade.

Did I mention my conflict of interest with Barnes? I thought not.

At this same time, you see, I was a News Clerk in the Culture Department at The New York Times, where Barnes, at the time, was writing on dance and theatre. Almost nightly -- late into the night, actually -- I'd run into Barnes, and often, too, I had to schlep his copy (remember those days before computers) from his typewriter to a copy editor on a floor below.

Now, I'm not saying that this odd contact made any difference in my NYU grades, but.... But. I just looked over some the graded papers (yes, I kept them), and they're not worth spit. Belatedly, thanks, Clive, for my A!

Again, how generous?

Well, Peter Frishauf, Ralph Watt, Froma Joselow, and John Belmonte, and I were also running the The Washington Square Journal, NYU's undergraduate daily. Naturally, given my in-class and out-of-class contact with Barnes, I was their point man to Barnes regarding a special request. Actually, two requests.

First, we wanted Barnes to write on cinema history for the Journal. For free. He did.

Second, we wanted him to support the Vietnam Moratorium. Remember the Vietnam War? That was the other war that went on forever. Supporting the Moratorium, as a professor, meant publicly cancelling classes for the day -- and getting stick from a trogolyte department head. This was particularly withering for an adjunct, like Barnes. 'Sure,' said Barnes.

At the end of a Barnes course (I took two), Barnes would invite his class to an afternoon 'tea' (read drinks party) at his West Side apartment overlooking the Hudson and Riverside Drive. The place was enormous, with panoramic windows.

On one occasion, tipsier than I suppose I knew, I summoned the nerve to ask a class-mate for a date. I remember we were standing on Central Park West, in front of the American Museum of Natural History. She said yes.

Like, I said. Clive was generous.

Clive Barnes died Wednesday in New York at 81.

Matt Bruccoli: O'Hara Scholar Dies

Matthew J. Bruccoli, 76, O'Hara's Biographer By William Grimes Published: June 6, 2008 Matthew J. Bruccoli, whose biography of John O'Hara and F. Scott Fitzgerald and an outpouring of scholarly essays and critical editions made him the dean of O'Hara and Fitzgerald studies in the United States, died at his home in Columbia, S.C., on Wednesday (5 June). He was 76. The cause was a glioma, a tumor of the brainstem, said his wife, Arlyn. Mr. Bruccoli (pronounced BROOK-uhly), who taught at the University of South Carolina for nearly 40 years, wrote more than 50 books on Fitzgerald or Hemingway, notably "Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald," published in 1981. He and his wife donated 3,000 books and periodical publications by and about Fitzgerald to the university. Matthew Joseph Bruccoli was born in the Bronx, where his father ran a drugstore and where he attended the Bronx High School of Science. He earned his bachelor's degree at Yale University in 1953 and briefly attended graduate school at Cornell University before transferring to the University of Virginia, where he received a master's degree and a doctorate. "It took me seven years because I kept taking time off to write books," he told The New York Post in 1978. After teaching at Ohio State University for eight years, he joined the English department at the University of South Carolina in 1969. He retired in 2005 as the Emily Brown Jefferies Distinguished Professor of English but continued to cut a dash on campus, instantly recognizable by his vintage red Mercedes convertible, Brooks Brothers suits, Groucho mustache and bristling crew cut that dated to his Yale days. His untamed Bronx accent also set him apart. In the publish-or-perish world of academia, Mr. Bruccoli set a daunting example. In addition to his voluminous work on Fitzgerald and Hemingway, he wrote biographies of John O'Hara, James Gould Cozzens and Ross Macdonald, compiled descriptive bibliographies of several authors and edited the letters and notebooks of many others, including Vladimir Nabokov, whose literature courses he took at Cornell. "He endeared himself to Nabokov by saying that his reason for taking the course was, 'I like stories,' " his wife said. "Nabokov thought that was the perfect answer." With Dmitri Nabokov, the novelist's son, Mr. Bruccoli edited "Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters, 1940-1977," published in 1989. In his spare time he helped run Bruccoli Clark Layman, a company that produced reference works of literary and social history, notably the Dictionary of Literary Biography. He also edited the Fitzgerald Newsletter from 1958 to 1968 and the Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual from 1969 to 1979. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Joseph, of Columbia, and three daughters: Mary, of Manhattan; Josephine Owens, of San Francisco; and Arlyn, of Corinth, Vt., as well as seven grandchildren.

Kennedy Khronicles

Laurie Graham Wonders About the 'Importance of Being Kennedy'

When Nora Brennan lands herself a position as nursery maid to a family in Brookline, Massachusetts, she little thinks it will place her at the heart of American history. In 1917 Joseph Kennedy is on his way to his first million. He has big plans, to found a dynasty and ensure that his baby son, Joe Junior, will be the first Catholic President of the United States.

The new Laurie Graham novel, The Importance of Being Kennedy, spans the founding years of the Kennedy dynasty. Nora Brennan, nursemaid to all nine Kennedy children, has witnessed every moment, public and private. She sees the four boys coached at their father's knee to believe that everything they'll ever want in life can be bought and the girls trained to be compliant Catholic wives.

The Second World War erupts while Kennedy Senior is the US Ambassador to Britain, and it changes the course of the carefully-plotted Kennedy family story in surprising ways. There is unavoidable tragedy abroad and unexpected romance at home, as both Nora and her favourite, Kick, find love in inconvenient places. Nora is forced to choose between the family she has nurtured around her and her own independence, while Kick stages her first act of rebellion by refusing to relinquish the Marquess of Hartington – an exceptionally favourable match but for his dyed-in-the-wool Protestantism. As her father's plan to raise a Catholic First Family gradually unravels, so too does the strict notion of what it means, essentially, to be a Kennedy.

Nora Brennan's story follows Kick through her youthful heyday as a star of the London social scene, her wartime marriage and widowing, and her eventual emergence from grief to lob an even bigger hand grenade into the Kennedy compound: a passionate love affair with another Protestant, and a married one to boot.

Author's Note
I'm of the generation that remembers vividly the assassination of JFK and Bobby, and the self-destruction of Teddy Kennedy at Chappaquiddick. I was always uncomfortable with the admiration lavished upon this family. They seemed to me to offer nothing more than a stunning illustration of the workings of hubris and to understand why, I suspected one need look no further than the patriarch and matriarch. My researches confirmed my suspicions. The Kennedy Curse did indeed exist. It was called Rose and Joe.

Is it fair to fictionalize real people and their descendants? I believe it is, if it provides a fair viewpoint, and below stairs, which is where I've chosen to put my narrator, is a very useful place to stand. When people become self-important they very quickly forget that the help have eyes and ears. And, parenthetically, I could argue that many 'biographies' of the Kennedys have been tantamount to hagiographic fiction.

The Importance of Being Kennedy follows an accurate time line and tells the family's story from a new standpoint. I'm particularly glad to have had the opportunity to tell the stories of Kick and Rosie, two Kennedy daughters whose refusal to fit into the mould cost them so dearly.

N.B. The U.S. edition of The Importance of Being Kennedy was released last week.

Tough Guys

James Jones and daughter Kaylie Jones, right

James Jones Flips

By Richard Carreño

During my university-days in Paris, in the late 1960's, I chased literary ghosts. There was nothing special about this -- every Yank student, to varying degrees, was interested the footprints of ex-pats Hemingway and Fitzgerald, who forged much their literary ouevre on Paris' Left Bank (Hemingway) and Right Bank (Fitzgerald).

Some of my ghosts were not quite so dead -- strictly speaking, that is -- as the 'Lost Generation.' I remember meeting Wicked Witch Mary McCarthy and Fairy Godmother Janet Flanner (Genet), both of The New Yorker, after a panel discussion one particularly dreary night. I even spent some time with Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy's former press secretary, former (appointed) U.S. senator from California, and, then, at that time, a Paris-based journalist. (He was also a trustee of the American University in Paris, the university I attended, and, thus, occasioning my acquaintance with him).

Of course, I searched other literary literary -- and cinematic -- lights, as well. After all, this was the time of the Nouvelle Vague. Jean-Luc Godard was always in my sights.

I was not very interested in later-day arrivals to Paris. I suppose there must have been dozens of important Yank writers in Paris at the time. (Then, as now, most mid-20th century writers I followed either stayed put, or reached out to English -- and English language -- roots).

The exception was James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity. And not much of an exception, at that. Like Mailer, Jones was one of those butch, World War II-era authors who, I thought, believed more in macho swagger than in stylised manners, a literary form that had, for me, greater appeal. But I knew Jones. I mean, I knew he lived in Paris. I knew what he looked like. A tough mug like his was hard to miss.

And I didn't.

I mention my brief encounter with Jones now because, just recently, I finished reading a highly-autobiographical novel, A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, about Jones and his life during that period in Paris, written by his daughter Kaylie Jones. It fills in some holes. Nothing big. Just niceties that put a finish on the subject.

Why, for example, was Jones, on that day, as I was walking from the Right to the Left Bank via the Ile de la Cite, at the brasserie where I found him playing pinball? Well, it turns out that Jones and his family lived nearby on the rue des Deux Ponts, and that this brasserie was his local. Moreover, like alot of us, he was a flipper (pinball) aficionado.

'He sat me on a barstool in front of the pinball machine and slipped two francs into the slot,' Kaylie Jones writes about her 'father.' "You're getting pretty good at this," he said, standing behind me with a hand on my shoulder. "Pretty soon you'll be beating your old man."

"Oh, no." I was concentrating on the ball.

The bar area was filled with workers who were stopping in a for drink on their way home. Most of them lived on the island and knew my father. They discussed their different jobs and the weather and the government with him. They liked him, I thought, because they considered him their own, personal American. And because his kids spoke French without accents and played in the street with their kids.

He showed me a new trick: how to capture the ball with the flipper and hold it so I could aim my shot.'

Attaboy boy, James!

Actually, Jones might have been doing exactly that on the afternoon when I saw him.

'Pleased to see you Mr Jones,' I said, during a break between flips. 'I'm a great fan.'

Jones smiled and took my hand in his hammy paw.

I watched him play for a minute, or two more.

I reckoned that he was OK, after all.

In London

Institut Francais, South Kensington lle

Talk Wed 31 Jan 7.30pm

Zelda Fitzgerald gets French Treatment

Alabama Song (Mercure de France, 2007) is the fictional autobiography of Zelda Sayre, wife to famed novelist F Scott Fitzgerald. Together the jet-setting Fitzgeralds lit up the flapper era in France and the US; in private, theirs was a tempestuous relationship further strained by Zelda's degenerating mental health. Gilles Leroy, awarded the prestigious Prix Goncourt for this, his twelth novel last year, will be in conversation with Boyd Tonkin, Literary Editor of The Independent. £3, conc. £2 In English early reservation recommended

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First-Class Mailer

Chapter I: Norman Mailer at the Barricades
Bala Cynwyd, PA: -- Anyone who had ever met Norman Mailer, who died last month, has a searing memory of the author.He was that kind of man -- larger than life, a force of nature to contend with. And the last of the early-to-mid 20th century macho authors. Ernest Hemingway, Irwin Shaw, James Jones. In other words, the likes of which we'll never see again. My recollection of Mailer involves two occasions.

One, in the early 70s when he was running for New York City mayor. His sidekick at the time -- I don't remember what post he was seeking -- was Jimmy Breslin, another outsized character in New York journalism. 1.

The Mailer I remember most vividly was the one who addressed the anti-Vietnam war protesters in front of the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago, during that infamous summer of the 1968 Democratic Convention. On television, Mailer was also 'debating' Gore Vidal, almost coming to blows.

I was in Chicago, teamed with Roberta Levine, as a reporter for The Washington Square Journal, the NYU daily. I was covering the anti-war protesters, later what became the 'police riot' in front of the hotel. Before that, speaker after speaker addressed the crowd. Mailer was amongst them.

'Chapter I,' he declared, segueing into an anti-war harangue. 'Chapter II,' he cried, continuing in that vein, cramming in as many 'chapters' as he could during a half hour or so. He was memorizing. More important, convincing.

If it weren't Mailer, it was surely Mayor Dick Daley' and his police 'pigs' who 'radicalised' me that August in Chicago. Moments after Mailer spoke, the police started throwing protesters through the Hilton's front pane windows, those facing Michigan Avenue. Others were clubbed.

I came away unscathed. I had positioned myself on the of a TV news van. From my perch, I saw the worst of it. And the best -- Mailer at his finest.

1. I met Breslin many years later for a day-long session in Worcester, MA, when he was Central Massachusetts, tending to his wife who was hospitalised in Newton, MA. That Breslin memory, of course, is another story.

-- Richard Carreño

OED

On Parole
Anopisthographic: adj. having writing or printing on one side only