The Visible Woman Reads

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 25, 2004 — Still reading the journals, notebooks, diaries collection. And the newspapers. Read a bit of some The New Yorker issues from last few weeks. It's important to read the papers. Else how would you know Twinkies were bankrupt, Cat Stephens was a terrorist suspect, another female suicide bomber had struck, another person was beheaded.

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 24, 2004 — Still reading the journals, notebooks, diaries collection. And the newspapers.

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 23, 2004 — Same as yesterday.

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 22, 2004 — Continuting an old issue of a literary anthology (Antæus) which devoted an issue in 1988 to "journals, notebooks, diaries." Newspapers.

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 21, 2004 — Started reading an old issue of a literary anthology (Antæus) which devoted an issue in 1988 to "journals, notebooks, diaries."

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 14-20, 2004 — Still reading Conversations with James Joyce by Arthur Power. Makes me want to read the literature that Power and Joyce discuss. Have tried to catch up all the newspapers I missed while traveling.

AUSTIN, Texas, and DUBLIN, Ireland, Sept. 7-14, 2004 — Finished Without Reservations by Alice Steinbach. In one tale she mentions finding someone named Steinbach in Pere Lachaise cemetery. It reminded me of one time stumbling onto a grave of Mme Ball. I read Peter Sheridan's 44 Dublin Made Me. Peter is brother to Jim who came to my attention through In America. Astonishingly, they both came to acting and theater when their father suddenly decided to found an amateur theater company to overcome his grief when their brother died of a brain tumor. I didn't know any of this when I bought the book. I just wanted to read something about Dublin while there. A personal story. It was fun to read about streets and then walk down them. In the spirit of not reading Ulysses but preparing to do so, I read a biography of James Joyce by Chester G. Anderson. And started Conversations with James Joyce by Arthur Power. I read a couple of local newspapers while I was gone. I read part of a couple of magazines. One a computer magazine and one an Irish Arts magazine.
Going to the Dublin Writer's museum made me want to read George Bernard Shaw, Beckett and Brendan Behan. There are always connections wherever I go and whatever I do that make me want to read stuff.

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 6, 2004 — Bunch of newspapers. Without Reservations by Alice Steinbach. I'm starting to warm to it if only because I like her current location, Paris, and share her admiration for Janet Flanner.

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 5, 2004 — Some newspapers. I actually found a cache of old Arts and Science Times and such I'd saved and never read and found myself reading papers with that slightly different spin of a year or a year and a half ago.

Finished Are You Somebody: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman by Nuala O'Faolain. This edition adds an afterword of responses she got to the book. Here is an interesting quote, too, that I thought summed up some of why I love to travel. "Perhaps places are for me what books were for my mother? They are altogether full of promise. They assuage some of the regret for all the lives I never had." I feel that way, traveling to cities, wandering far from home. It's strange. This book seems to be a rather straightforward rendition of the alcohol, no birth control and neglect school of Irish parenting with a woman who achieves some things as a journalist as the central figure. Yet it was enormously successful. I'm thinking that, as with Angela's Ashes, a lot of people see a personal resonance in such stories. I guess I'm lucky that I had the loving upbringing I did. Dad drank a little (OK, a lot until he figured out how long he was going to live) but he was affectionate when he wasn't working and not distant. He encouraged his girl children to succeed. There were only two of us because my parents had difficulty having kids, as they would have us believe. There may have been one or two miscarriages as well. My mother was very attentive especially considering she was always working toward something, first selling milk and butter to people in town and then going back to college and taking classes for years, getting two degrees and teaching. I read about the abusive, neglectful childhoods people had and then the horror of caring for parents who wouldn't take care of themselves in their old age who had spoiled the child's youth only to spill over into spoiling the child's adulthood. I can't really relate. I think how sensitive I was and I realize that without pretty careful handling I wouldn't have made it. My parents did fight and I found it hurtful. But there was no physical abuse, none of that stuff that made everything different forever. Our family might stray out of bounds but it could come back.

Started Without Reservations by Alice Steinbach. She strikes me as self-indulgent and it seems to me after a few pages that she doesn't have any particular hold on her material but maybe I'll warm to it. Probably read it after my trip.

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 4, 2004 — Some newspapers. I'm falling behind on the papers. How can that be when I do so little else? Are You Somebody: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman by Nuala O'Faolain. Almost finished here. At some point she starts living with a woman and, I guess, it is sexual, too, but she isn't very explicit about that...she is more explicit about the men.

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 3, 2004 — Some newspapers. Are You Somebody: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman by Nuala O'Faolain. This is a name dropper of the literary and arts world. I realize how sheltered I have been from such a life.

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 2, 2004 — Some newspapers. Amid the NY Times reporting for Wednesday, serious stuff about positions and protests (and, by the way, I don't think protesters should be allowed to assault delegates verbally or physically as individuals but, of course, they should be allowed to assemble), was a poll to see if delegates (and New Yorkers as a control group) could tell pastrami from corned beef. Need to fill that space, you know. Are You Somebody: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman by Nuala O'Faolain. Very frank book about growing up as an intellectual woman pre-revolution (you know, freedom for women) in Ireland.

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 1, 2004 — Some newspapers. Having trouble keeping up with papers! So many bombings and deaths and disagreements. Are You Somebody: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman by Nuala O'Faolain.