During a few hours he spent near the Kings Road apartment he once shared with model and actress Padma Lakshmi, Rushdie did not come across as either a distinguished literary figure — Rushdie’s swirling 1981 Booker-winner, “Midnight’s Children,” is arguably the greatest British novel of the last few decades, and he was recently knighted — or a man who’d once had a price on his head. He was more like a good-humored, slightly star-struck visitor to L.A., happy to be back among old haunts.
He also enjoyed being in a place where the paparazzi are distracted by more glamorous figures. “Here, there’s Hollywood,” he said, a balding man with wire glasses and a Cheshire cat grin. “You know, they want Lindsay Lohan — they don’t want me.”
Speaking of Rushdie, he was on the Colbert Report earlier this month:
“Libraries are better than schools. You can’t go to a University and get a diploma. It doesn’t mean a goddamn thing. You’ve got to go to a bookstore and a library and educate yourself. You go to a bookstore and find yourself. The surprises that you find on the shelves are you, represent the things that you need, not that the teachers need…”
I still haven’t posted about my getting to meet him last year at an event in San Berdoo — ASAP. Speaking of Bradbury, Redlands has chosen Fahrenheit 451 as the 2009 choice for their citywide book reading program.
The man who championed protecting natural spaces — especially in what is now Yosemite National Park — was born in Scotland, moved as a boy to Wisconsin and later hiked from Kentucky to south Florida; there, he got sick and headed to California to recuperate. Once he found the wilds of Northern California in 1868, he was smitten. He climbed rocks, cursed the sharp hooves of sheep that tore up wildflowers and even snuck President Teddy Roosevelt away from his handlers and into the backcountry for three nights of camping.
He also wrote like a fiend.
And if your fiendishness is lacking at any given moment, check out this big Think Simple Now article to take care of the problem: “Connect with Your Creative Writer”:
Although, the term writers block is popular, this feeling of blockage and mind blanking is not specific to writing, but of any creative feats. Other examples include, brainstorming for a new business, dancing, musical performances, music composition, painting or photography. I’ve personally experienced this during my photography work, blanking out as I stand in front of a client waiting for me for direction. I call these Creative Blocks, where your mind just comes up empty and you feel lost. It’s purely mental.
Through practice and observation, I’ve gotten pretty good at getting past these blank moments, and this article shares some insights for unlocking your creativity. Throughout the article, I will be using writing as the example, but keep in mind that it is equally applicable to any creative activity.
George Carlin was a guru of mine, though we never met. His love of language and its many wonders never failed to send the synapses firing in my brain. His ability to tweak the noses of those in authority was inspirational, and his mission to call anybody on their bullshit was a gift.
“I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.” - George Carlin
I wondered absently if actor Orlando Bloom were named for the character.
(And of course one of Bloom’s most famous roles came in the various Pirates of the Caribbean movies, based on a theme park ride you can visit in Orlando, Florida.)
Looking it up today, he was actually named for English (Tudor/Jacobean period) composer/organist Orlando Gibbons.
According to Wikipedia,
Gibbons was the “favorite composer” of the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. “Ever since my teen-age years his music has moved me more deeply than any other sound experience I can think of.”
Dubbed “the American Olivier” by New York Times theater critic Frank Rich for his stage acting…
Branagh himself was, of course, both praised and panned by the English theatre critics. Like this one for his portrayal of Hamlet in the late 80s,
Critic Milton Shulman for the Evening Standard wrote: “On the positive side Branagh has the vitality of Olivier, the passion of Gielgud, the assurance of Guinness, to mention but three famous actors who have essayed the role. On the negative side, he has not got the magnetism of Olivier, nor the mellifluous voice quality of Gielgud nor the intelligence of Guinness.”
Submitted by Robert Daeley on Wed, 2007-08-22 12:28.
Happy Birthday to a couple of my very favorite writers!
Dorothy Parker was born on this day in 1893, and while she is most remembered for her days with the Round Table in New York, she spent a number of years in Hollywood as a screenwriter (IMDB). She passed away in 1967.
I’m never going to accomplish anything; that’s perfectly clear to me. I’m never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don’t do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don’t even do that any more.
And yes, you might as well live.
Ray Bradbury, also born on 8/22, but in 1920. (Funny to think of Mrs Parker at 27 when he was born, being fired by Vanity Fair for offending people.) A while back I wrote about Ray:
[He] is the ghost in the machine. He finds the soul in the rocket, traces the life in the Martian colony, points out the demons lurking in the fires of a burning book.
Always one to tweak the nose of too-serious folks, Ray has recently been talking about what Fahrenheit 451really means. Some people have gotten a little pissy about it, which says more about them than Bradbury. And that’s kind of the point.
Living nearly a century and writing some of the best literature in the world gives you a smidgen of latitude. ;)
Submitted by Robert Daeley on Wed, 2007-08-15 13:57.
Richard Henry Dana (for whom Dana Point was named) wrote Two Years Before the Mast as a diary during a sea voyage. I’ve not read it yet, though I will definitely be checking it out soon, if for no other reason than the portrait it contains of early 19th Century California.
In the book, which takes place between 1834 and 1836, Dana gives a vivid account of “the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is”. He sails from Boston, around Cape Horn, arriving in California when it was a remote Mexican land, and San Diego, San Pedro, Los Angeles, and San Francisco weren’t much more than a few sheds. He gives descriptions of landing at each of the ports up and down the California coast as they existed then. In the book, he makes a tellingly accurate prediction of San Francisco’s future. He also gives a nice description of a society wedding amongst the “Californios.”
