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for Mark Curley WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS VISITS STRATFORD-ON-AVON “At Stratford I felt as I had not before that one of the most charming things in Shakespeare, a man so variously charming that his contemporaries each might love him for a different thing, was his fondness for his native town.” William Dean Howells in The SeenContinue reading “BITS AND PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: SHAKESPEARE”

MAX CARRADOS, THE BLIND DETECTIVE “When (ERNEST) Bramah introduced the blind Carrados, he created the first physically handicapped detective in mystery fiction. Having become blind as an adult, Carrados is able to adjust and maintain his life, including his abilities to detect. His blindness does not weaken his zest for life. He works side byContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISLAID LIFE: MYSTERIES, MYSTERY WRITERS,CRIME & PUNISHMENT”

THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON FRIGHTENS A MOTHER & CHILD ON THE BEACH Ricou Browning, the stuntman who provided the underwater shots of the creature, once had to make an emergency bathroom visit while he was filming a scene. Browning had been underwater for several minutes and breached the water, in full costume, nextContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: FILM #13”

BARBRA STREISAND “My dream is to be the girl at 15 who got on that freighter. That was my dream: to go on a freighter and land in Morocco or Algiers for $135. I talked to a girl who said that when she was 19, she had traveled around the world, and I thought ,Continue reading “BITS AND PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: PEOPLE”

OSCAR WILDE IN A HOUSE OF ILL-REPUTE “…You may have heard that Oscar Wilde was once sent to a house of prostitution in France, by friends who raised the money at a bar one night, snd that afterwards, when he was asked what he thought about it, he said, ‘It was like cold mutton.’ JamesContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: SEX FOR SINGULAR PERSONS/ANIMALS”

JOHN UPDIKE ON THE POWER AND CHARM OF COMIC STRIPS “Part of the power and charm of the newspaper comic strip is that it be constantly renewing itself before our eyes – that it arrive with our coffee and cereal, and be relished in less than a minute and not seen again for twenty-four hours,Continue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: COMICS & COMIC STRIPS”

F.SCOTT FITZGERALD’S THEORY OF WRITING “My theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever after.’ Fitzgerald in a letter to the Booksellers Convention (April 1921) –quoted in Oxford Dictionary of TwentiethContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THE JOYS OF WRITING”

“I could read inside an MRI machine if the book held me tight.Reading needs privacy which is too rare. I feel a relationship develops, and usually I don’t want to talk about it while I’m reading. And often after. It’s an intimate experience.” Lynne Tillman in “By the Book” in The New York Times (AugustContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THE JOYS OF READING (Sept. 2022)”

NOT ALL PLACES ARE DESIGNED FOR HUMAN COMFORT “Seattle as I understand it –very little—was not a place designed to make you feel comfortable. How could we expect that within the magnetic field of Starbucks, Boeing, Bill Gates and Microsoft, Amazon, and Kindle? There was, as Gary Snyder said, in a book I found inContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: TRAVEL”

WHAT MAKES ACTORS TICK? “Fascination with actors shows no sign of abating. The public still, it seems, longs to know as a journalist put it to Alec Guinness on his first visit to America, what makes them tick.(“I wasn’t aware that I was ticking, ” Guinness replied.)” Simon Callow, reviewing The Method, in The NewContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THEATER”