I need cheering up, so I thought I'd share some Helene Hanff (84 Charing Cross Road) with you...
March 25, 1950
Frank Doel, what are you DOING over there, you are not doing ANYthing, you are just sitting AROUND.Where is Leigh Hunt? Where in the Oxford Verse? Where is the Vulgate and dear goofy John Henry, I thought they'd be nice uplifting reading for Lent and NOTHING do you send me.
you leave me sitting here writing long margin notes in library books that don't belong to me, some day they'll find out i did it and take my library card away.
October 15, 1950
WELL!!All I have to say to YOU, Frank Doel, is we live in depraved, destructive and degenerate times when a bookshop--a BOOKSHOP--starts tearing up beautiful old books to use as wrapping paper. I said to John Henry when he stepped out of it:
'Would you believe a thing like that, Your Eminence?' and he said he wouldn't. You tore that book up in the middle of a major battle and I don't even know which war it was.
[...] I want the Q anthology. [...] Why don't you wrap it in pages LCXII and LCXIII so I can at least find out who won the battle and what war it was?
May 8, 1960
...Did I tell you I finally found the perfect page-cutter? It's a pearl-handled fruit knife. My mother left me a dozen of them, I keep one in the pencil cup on my desk. Maybe I go with the wrong kind of people but i'm just not likely to have twelve guests all sitting around simultaneously eating fruit.That last line about the fruit really reminded me of Ms. Brownlow's emails. Here's one of her recent missives, for your comparison and enjoyment:
I read last night that Gingrich is planning to have six space flights a week, and once there are 13,000 people permanently living on the moon he wants to make it a state.
No wonder he's the leading republican candidate at the moment! Such a visionary! Many republicans say he's pretty much the smartest person they've ever met. (That's staggering. But probably not the way they meant it to be.)
Once again: betcha don't have politicians like that. Bet we're the only ones who have candidates so ambitious they think their country owns the moon. Our 51st state! Will we call the state 'moon' do you think? Or something else? Do we own the whole moon? We'll have to ask our candidates.
6 comments:
The book sounds hilarious and Mrs. Brownlow, who it sounds like I should get familiar with, is also hilarious.
ps sorry about your pb squares. I hate when that happens. You don't want to eat them and yet you don't want to throw them away.
I wonder how old Newt plans to pay for those six spaceflights a week without raising taxes on the top 1%? Cuz the rest of us sure as hell don't have it.
@JJJ Thank you for my squares concern. It turns out if I put them in the freezer the chocolate layer firms up, and they're ok. The peanut butter layer isn't as sweet as it could be, but it's good enough for moi. As directed by Ms Brownlow I make a cup of black tea, put on the classic music, get out my 84 Charing Cross Road, and have a square.
@Skye - I believe he's going to be depending entirely on you. Not only to finance it, but to lead the expedition. Are you up to it? Will you have to sell an organ?
How come blokes with names like 'Newt' - a lizard, and 'Mitt' as in oven, are ever taken so seriously? ... are they they're real names, or diminutives, like Chuck, for Charles?
Newt is short for Newton.
Mitt is his middle name--named for his father's cousin, a football player named Milton, Mitt was his nickname.
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