Journaling5 - Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Besides my usual and extensive reading of online newspapers and blogs especially, I really have to begin to read more extensively; this doesn’t just mean the novels I am currently reading: Anna Karenina, Middlesex, and Ten Days in the Hills from the upstairs bathroom, the living room, and the bedroom respectively. This does not include Up in the Old Hotel that furnishes me with reading pleasure in the basement bathroom. Also not included is my “New Yorker” magazine that I faithful read every week, except I no longer read it at the kitchen table at my wife’s insistence.
I have all these books on the go, but I don’t spend enough time on them, especially my bedtime reading. I haven’t looked at Jane Smiley’s Ten Days in the Hills in at least two months. This means I have to spend more time, at least 10-15 minutes reading before I go to sleep. Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, yes, it is an Oprah selection, is quite interesting reading about a very unique topic that I have recently spent much more time attending to as I try and spend a little more time with my wife in the living room while she watches all her many favourite TV shows and less time by myself in the computer room. Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel deals with true stories about the many characters Mitchell interviewed in 1940s New York in a wonderfully written, but awfully dated book.
There is an interesting story about Mitchell and his long relationship with “The New Yorker” magazine. Apparently he had a desk, or an office, I’m not quite sure which, at the magazine for decades, and yet he never published a thing. Apparently he would show up to his office every day and would be summarily greeted by one and all, yet he never submitted anything for “The New Yorker” for publication. No one asked him what he was doing; no one knows whether he wrote a word or not in the time spent at his desk/office. He did this until his death. I think that says a lot about “The New Yorker” as a magazine and as an institution (it is just one more reason why I have such an affection and respect for the magazine).
Meanwhile back at Up in the Old Hotel, I read the first two stories: one about an old Irish pub that went through remarkably few owners and about a lady named Maizie who worked at the ticket kiosk for an old movie theatre in the Bowery. I realized at this point I really was not all that interested in what happened in New York before I was born. Thus I began to pick and choose stories to read; now I’m reading about the Mohawk Indians from just south of Montreal and their remarkable story concerning their complete lack of fear of heights. These natives are responsible in large part for most of the skyscrapers in Manhattan and the various huge bridges that dot the landscapes of North America. I’m not sure what else I might read from this book, if anything else.