Reading about Justice Harry Blackmun's overall impact on Roe v. Wade in Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey by Linda Greenhouse, a sentence in the first paragraph of Chapter 9, "Improbable Icon", struck me with a reminder:
"On Harry Blackmun's improbably journey, becoming a feminist icon was perhaps the most improbable destination of all."
Once again, reading one book led me to think about another author, being that Anna Quindlen, in her collection of columns entitled Thinking Out Loud, had written a touching tribute to Blackmun upon his retirement from the Supreme Court. Quindlen, a feminist, thanked Blackmun for all that he had done for women with that one opinion. And just then, I thought about how Quindlen matched the kind of writer I like to be, with it being ok to have a big heart, following your convictions with firm certainity while agreeably learning about all that's going on around you, open to other opinions.
After I finished reading Thinking Out Loud a week ago, I went to Amazon and spotted an interesting-looking cover for Quindlen's novel, Every Last One, two red flowers next to a framed photo of what looks like a woman in a willowy white slip. I read only the first page of the provided sample, and went to abebooks.com and ordered it. I didn't need to know what it's about. I wanted to see what Quindlen is like as a novelist.
I'm still waiting for Every Last One to arrive, and I may also partake of Quindlen's other novels, but now I also want to read Living Out Loud and Loud and Clear, two other collections of Quindlen's columns. And though I read How Reading Changed My Life in January of last year, I feel like I read it without really knowing who Quindlen was. I want to try again.
Before starting Thinking Out Loud, I read all of Celia Rivenbark's books from the end of September (Bless Your Heart, Tramp and We're Just Like You, Only Prettier), through four days toward the middle of this month (Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank, Belle Weather, You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start in the Morning, and You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl). I liked her very funny observations, but thinking about those books, I don't remember an overall great deal of them beyond the life which I also lived in part as a resident of South and then Central and then South Florida again.
But I feel a kinship with Quindlen, observing everyday life, always wondering, always appreciative of the days given to live, with a big heart to match. I want to see what else she offers in her other columns, and now's the time.
Showing posts with label anna quindlen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anna quindlen. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
Favorite Quindlen Passage
I couldn't squeeze this into my previous entry about reading Talking Out Loud this afternoon. This needed to be here, in its own space, a part of Quindlen's column from July 8, 1992 about the United States Olympic men's basketball team, especially because of her stated equivalent:
"Somewhere in the contract of the male columnist it is written that once a year he must wax poetic and philosophic about baseball, making it sound like a cross between the Kirov and Zen Buddhism. This covers the baseball profundity axis more than adequately, which is a good thing. The connection between a base hit and karma eludes me.
But basketball is something different, sweatier and swifter and not likely to be likened to haiku, thank God. And this Olympic basketball team is something different entirely. It is the best sports team ever, the equivalent of rounding up the greatest American writers of the last century or so and watching them collaborate: "O.K., Twain, you do the dialogue and hand off to Faulkner. He'll do the interior monologue. Hemingway will edit--no, don't make that face, you know you overwrite. And be nice to Cheever. He's young, but he's got a good ear. Wharton and Cather can't play--they're girls." On television they were running down the lineup: Larry Bird. Patrick Ewing. Michael Jordan. Magic Johnson. When they got to Christian Laettner, the student prince of college basketball, I almost felt sorry for the guy because he was so outclasses, a mere champion among giants. We don't see giants often, even one at a time, never mind en masse and in skivvies."
Amen, Reverend Quindlen!
"Somewhere in the contract of the male columnist it is written that once a year he must wax poetic and philosophic about baseball, making it sound like a cross between the Kirov and Zen Buddhism. This covers the baseball profundity axis more than adequately, which is a good thing. The connection between a base hit and karma eludes me.
But basketball is something different, sweatier and swifter and not likely to be likened to haiku, thank God. And this Olympic basketball team is something different entirely. It is the best sports team ever, the equivalent of rounding up the greatest American writers of the last century or so and watching them collaborate: "O.K., Twain, you do the dialogue and hand off to Faulkner. He'll do the interior monologue. Hemingway will edit--no, don't make that face, you know you overwrite. And be nice to Cheever. He's young, but he's got a good ear. Wharton and Cather can't play--they're girls." On television they were running down the lineup: Larry Bird. Patrick Ewing. Michael Jordan. Magic Johnson. When they got to Christian Laettner, the student prince of college basketball, I almost felt sorry for the guy because he was so outclasses, a mere champion among giants. We don't see giants often, even one at a time, never mind en masse and in skivvies."
Amen, Reverend Quindlen!
An Ideal Afternoon Lived
For now, in Santa Clarita, I spend as much time as I can reading, which during the week means large stretches of the afternoon given over to it. And I read with no expectation of doing anything else, doing anything better, because this is better. This is best.
Throughout this afternoon, I read from page 33 to the end of Thinking Out Loud by Anna Quindlen, a collection of her columns. I love newspaper column writers because the great ones teach you about succinctness, of packaging all your thoughts about any topic into a short number of words. Blogs don't have the limit that newspaper space does, but I don't like to pontificate for 182 paragraphs when far fewer will do. 180. Maybe.
In fact, my favorite aspect of my writing is knowing when to stop, an instinct honed from beginning to write when I was 11, all the way through to working at The Signal for two years, and beyond that to today, just as a voracious reader. Whenever I write anything here, it starts from an idea that pops to mind during the day that I just have to put into a lot of words. Then I start, and eventually, I get to that point where I think I've done all I can for that certain topic. The 10 floors of the Fairmont Hotel in Newport Beach (http://scrapsofliteracy.blogspot.com/2011/01/ghosts-grow-larger.html) require more than recounting weekend errands.
In the case of reading Thinking Out Loud, many things were going through my mind, first that Quindlen has a huge heart and an innate understanding of people. Real people. Not politicos who claim to have solutions that turn out only to suit them. Not famous people who are as far removed from daily life as a polar bear is from outer space. You and me and the babies that have changed Quindlen's life and outlook, for example, as well as columns about politics and the human faces of abortion, not just conjecture, and sweet columns about her children.
I also thought about other books I have that I want to read, such as that which I received today, including Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court by Jan Crawford Greenburg, a biography of legendary film critic Pauline Kael by Brian Kellow, and Second Lives: A Journey Through Virtual Worlds by Tim Guest, about those who live in and for computer-generated environments. I will never run out of anything to read, and this makes me the happiest over anything else in my life, although the attempts to be published for a second time and hopefully so on always compete with that.
Most of all, I just sat there on the couch, deeply satisfied at where I was and what I was doing (It comes with feeling like you're floating a bit, even though you're just sitting). I was reading a book, a particularly good one. That's all I needed. These are my ideal afternoons.
Throughout this afternoon, I read from page 33 to the end of Thinking Out Loud by Anna Quindlen, a collection of her columns. I love newspaper column writers because the great ones teach you about succinctness, of packaging all your thoughts about any topic into a short number of words. Blogs don't have the limit that newspaper space does, but I don't like to pontificate for 182 paragraphs when far fewer will do. 180. Maybe.
In fact, my favorite aspect of my writing is knowing when to stop, an instinct honed from beginning to write when I was 11, all the way through to working at The Signal for two years, and beyond that to today, just as a voracious reader. Whenever I write anything here, it starts from an idea that pops to mind during the day that I just have to put into a lot of words. Then I start, and eventually, I get to that point where I think I've done all I can for that certain topic. The 10 floors of the Fairmont Hotel in Newport Beach (http://scrapsofliteracy.blogspot.com/2011/01/ghosts-grow-larger.html) require more than recounting weekend errands.
In the case of reading Thinking Out Loud, many things were going through my mind, first that Quindlen has a huge heart and an innate understanding of people. Real people. Not politicos who claim to have solutions that turn out only to suit them. Not famous people who are as far removed from daily life as a polar bear is from outer space. You and me and the babies that have changed Quindlen's life and outlook, for example, as well as columns about politics and the human faces of abortion, not just conjecture, and sweet columns about her children.
I also thought about other books I have that I want to read, such as that which I received today, including Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court by Jan Crawford Greenburg, a biography of legendary film critic Pauline Kael by Brian Kellow, and Second Lives: A Journey Through Virtual Worlds by Tim Guest, about those who live in and for computer-generated environments. I will never run out of anything to read, and this makes me the happiest over anything else in my life, although the attempts to be published for a second time and hopefully so on always compete with that.
Most of all, I just sat there on the couch, deeply satisfied at where I was and what I was doing (It comes with feeling like you're floating a bit, even though you're just sitting). I was reading a book, a particularly good one. That's all I needed. These are my ideal afternoons.
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