Death Takes the Holidays
The Grim Reaper has been on a merciless tear through the literary world. Plus links to some Oldsterish content...
I tend to read, watch, and listen to an awful lot of Oldsterish content. Now and then I’ll pass some of it along to you in a link roundup like this one.
Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. I mean, death is part of life, and in the best instances, it comes later on. But in the space of two weeks, death has come for entirely too many literary and publishing icons: Greg Tate, bell hooks, Eve Babitz, Joan Didion, and Grace Mirabella. Here, some tributes:
“Greg Tate was a writer, musician, and connector, but he was also the maker of movements.” At LitHub, author and critic Michael A. Gonzales remembers his mentor.
“As she said in ‘Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work’: ‘No black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much.’ Indeed, no woman writer can write ‘too much’ . . . No woman has ever written enough.’” At The Washington Post, Mikki Kendall memorializes bell hooks.
“Eve’s name morphed into a curious shorthand for being in thrall to the fantasy of Los Angeles, but her prose is stuffed with details, details, details.” At The Los Angeles Times, Christina Catherine Martinez writes an appreciation of L.A. art world/celebrity chronicler Eve Babitz.
LitHub pays tribute to essayist, memoirist, novelist, screenwriter and icon Joan Didion (to whom I am forever indebted) with a roundup of pieces it’s published about her through the years.
The New York Review of Books has a wealth of Didion’s work in its archive. (h/t Alexander Chee.)
Check out this 1974 Linda Kuehl interview with Joan Didion in The Paris Review’s series, The Art of Fiction. (h/t Michael A. Gonzales)
“Where Ms. Vreeland was colorful, electric and theatrical, Ms. Mirabella was pragmatic and businesslike. Her mandate was to change the character of the magazine, and Vogue quickly took on the values of its new editor, becoming more accessible and down to earth.” At The New York Times, Phyllis Messinger has an obituary of Vogue and Mirabella editor, Grace Mirabella.
Okay. On to the living…
“In the first hour of our first meeting, I learned that he flew dozens of critical and dangerous missions during the war, had saved his crew by successfully crash-landing an enormous bomber in no-man’s land — and then helped orchestrate a daring escape back out….Perhaps most remarkable: Mr. Spiegel is improbably best known as ‘the king of the artificial Christmas tree.’” My friend, author and documentarian Laurie Gwen Shapiro, profiles nonagenarian Si Speigel in her first article for The New York Times.
Some how Ed Yong, the Atlantic’s brilliant science reporter on the Covid beat, is only 40. Here, he explains how the advent of Omicron prompted him to cancel his birthday party.
“Now, in my seventh decade, I looked on love as a danger zone and felt safer being alone, prepared to live in the land of lost loves for the rest of my life.” In The New York Times Modern Love column, Judith Fetterley writes about finding new love at 67.
Andrea King Collier’s NextAvenue series on financial planning with her husband for life after 65 is eye-opening and inspiring.
In GuitarWorld, John Frusciante, Jack White, Emily Wolfe and Peter Frampton pay tribute to Electro-Harmonix founder Mike Matthews on his 80th birthday.
You don't even have to have a green thumb to appreciate Judith Fetterley's gorgeous garden writing.
One of the greatest filmmakers of all time died recently- Lina Wertmuller