May 4, 2016 at 11:08 pm (Books, Conversations, Places, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: humor, nonfiction, Paul Theroux, trav, travel books
An encounter in Eutaw:
“You’re late,” the woman said. “Why are you late?”
And then she proceeds to give Theroux such a deep-freeze, icy reception and tongue-lashing that he ends up apologizing three times, and saying things like
- I’m grateful to you for seeing me on such short notice.
- I was distracted by: 1. Back roads. 2. Groves of trees. 3. Golden fields. 4. Cotton bursting open.
- I’m only fifteen minutes late.
Paul Theroux, I would advise never returning to the town of Eutaw.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 4, 2016 at 8:52 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Explorers, Memoirs, Places, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: nonfiction, Paul Theroux, praise, reading lists, travel books
Are dear blog readers getting sick of the Theroux quotes? Well, too bad! Because even at his crankiest, Theroux has something to offer everyone!
Tuscaloosa is a cluttered urban island in a great, soft, rural sea: the misleadingly serene surfaces of the South — low hills, grassy swales, cotton and bean fields, swamps humming with flies, dejected woods.
Stay tuned.
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May 4, 2016 at 7:40 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Food and Drink, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Places, postaday, Publishers, Recommended, short story collections, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Cork, Crab Orchard Review, discoveries, exhibits, Ireland, Katniss Everdeen, lists, Literary Magazines, London, museums, postaday, postaweek, praise, restaurants, teaching, The Hunger Games, travel, UCLA Extension, United Kingdom, Wordpress, YA
OH NO! SELF ACCIDENTALLY DELETED HER OWN POST.
It happened while she was trying to expand on her reasons for assembling this particular mosaic of images to represent the week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge: ADMIRATION.
And she couldn’t find a previous saved version. Gaaaah! And in re-selecting images, she decided to stop at six instead of the eight she originally had. And she also substituted some images. Sorry for the confusion!
- Lady in Red: Ger, chef of Cork’s pre-eminent restaurant, Café Paradiso. Such a great chef, and also very direct and witty! Self loves Ger.
- Katniss Everdeen: Self-explanatory, really.
- Allison Joseph, co-editor with Jon Tribble of Crab Orchard Review. Fabulousness.
- The mother-daughter team who cook and manage Chez Mamie, 22 Hanway Street, London. They make London feel like home.
- SeaCity Museum, Southampton, England: Thank you to Joan McGavin, who took her here last year. What a great exhibit on the Titanic. While other cities lay claim to having the best exhibits on the tragedy, Southampton’s is so poignant because it focuses on the crew, most of whom were from this city. And therefore, the focus of the displays is on working-class people. Which makes this a much more layered story. In one gallery, there’s a map on the floor with red dots representing the houses of each of the victims. The dots are clustered around the poorer sections of the city.
- Last but not least: Nutschell Ann Windsor, Program Administrator for UCLA Extension’s on-line Writers Program. She is the best. She not only handles all requests with Zen calmness, she is a writer herself. And an editor. She’s holding an anthology she edited.
Ger in Front of Café Paradiso, Self’s Go-To Restaurant in Cork
Katniss, page from Costume Designer’s Sketch Book for The Hunger Games
Met the poet and Crab Orchard Review editor Allison Joseph at the AWP Book Fair in Minneapolis, April 2015.
Such a Team! This Mother and Daughter Own Chez Mamie, 22 Hanway Street, London: They’re originally from Belgium.
Further Areas of Southampton Showing Homes of the Titanic crew who drowned
Nutschell Ann Windsor is a graduate of the University of the Philippines, a UCLA Extension Program Administrator, and co-editor of an anthology called SPROUTS.
And now self will post before she accidentally deletes something again.
Stay tuned.
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May 4, 2016 at 12:57 pm (Books, Conversations, Places, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: nonfiction, Paul Theroux, reading lists, travel, travel books
That is a great name for a country road. Especially one in the Deep South. Lucky for Paul Theroux, he found it. And was not deterred by a sentry outside a “big fence” who told him, in no uncertain terms, Get lost!
No, what the sentry actually told Theroux was, “Turn your car around, sir, and keep going.”
Same thing. There’s nothing more freezing sometimes than that oh-so-stoic American politeness.
And then Theroux writes:
. . . in the South I traveled in eccentric circles, in and out of the fourth dimension, always hopeful, making plans to return, and saying to myself, as I did that day on Atomic Road: I’ll be back.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 4, 2016 at 9:40 am (Books, Places, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: humor, Paul Theroux, reading lists, travel, travel books
Theroux is a master of the caustic zinger. Exhibit A:
- I was the sinner sitting among the publicans, well behind the Philistines, in a back pew. I was not normally a churchgoer, but what made a Sunday in the South complete was a church service, a gun show, or a football game.
Stay tuned.
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May 4, 2016 at 7:44 am (Books, Conversations, destinations, Memoirs, Places, Traveling)
Tags: memoir, nonfiction, Paul Theroux, travel, travel books
“Next time you come here, pay us a visit at our church, Revelation Ministries. Promise me you will.”
“I promise,” I said, and the notion of returning made me happy.
— Deep South, Paul Theroux
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