John Steinbeck on the Blackwing pencil

"I have found a new kind of pencil--the best I have ever had. Of course it costs three times as much but it is black and soft and doesn't break off. I think I will always use these. They are called Blackwings and they really glide over the paper."

John Steinbeck, "The Art of Fiction," Paris Review (1969)

Other Blackwing posts
Blackwing 2: The Return
The new Blackwing pencil
Nelson Riddle on the Blackwing pencil
Stephen Sondheim on pencils, paper

New links

Under "fiction," I've added a link for John Steinbeck, to a Paris Review compilation of his thoughts on writing (a free download).

Under "poetry," the Marianne Moore link now goes to her Paris Review interview (another free download).

Under "writing and tools," I've added links to the Cool Tools site and to a page that explains what became of the Blackwing pencil, Steinbeck's favorite pencil.

More on Teresa Wright

From a piece in the Guardian:

The New York-born Wright's arrival in Hollywood caused a stir, not because of her star power but because of an unprecedented clause Samuel Goldwyn agreed to write into her contract.

It said that she "shall not be required to pose for photographs in a bathing suit unless she is in water. Neither may she be photographed running on the beach with her hair flying in the wind. Nor may she pose in any of the following situations: in shorts; playing with a cocker spaniel; digging in a garden; whipping up a meal; attired in firecrackers and holding skyrockets for the fourth of July; looking insinuatingly at the turkey for Thanksgiving; wearing a bunny cap with long ears for Easter; twinkling on prop snow in a skiing outfit while a fan blows her scarf."

You can read the whole piece, by Ronald Bergan, by clicking here.

Huck's Raft

From Joyce Carol Oates' review of Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood, by Steven Mintz:

Huck's Raft is an inspired title for a book that deconstructs images, prejudices, "wisdom." On the jacket is what appears to be an illustration of Huckleberry Finn alone and blissfully carefree on his raft on the fabled Mississippi, some time in the mid-nineteenth century; in fact, the photograph is of Charles Lindbergh as a boy rafting on the Mississippi c1912. It is Professor Mintz's argument that American fantasies about childhood are most succinctly (and erroneously) bound up with such idyllic images: the romance of a neverland in which children and young adolescents enjoyed unlimited freedom and were not exploited and abused by their elders. It may have been that Mark Twain shared something of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idealization of childhood, as he valued nature over the hypocrisy of society, yet the painful evidence of Huckleberry Finn is that its boy-hero is "an abused child, whose father, the town drunk, beat him for going to school and learning to read." In Hannibal, Missouri, in Huck's time, before the Civil War destroyed Southern slavery, life for many Americans was likely to be nasty, brutish and short: even among the middle class, approximately one child in four died in infancy, and one individual in two before his or her twenty-first birthday. The notion of a lengthy childhood, "devoted to education and free from adult responsibilities, is a very recent invention, and one that became a reality for a majority of children only after World War II."

You can read the entire review by clicking here.

Teresa Wright

Sad news this morning:

Teresa Wright, the high-minded ingénue who marshaled intelligence and spunk to avoid being typecast as another 1940's "sweater girl" and became the only actor to be nominated for Academy Awards for her first three films, died on Sunday at Yale-New Haven Hospital. She was 86.

The cause was a heart attack, her daughter, Mary-Kelly Busch, said.

Miss Wright had many parts on Broadway and once performed at a White House dinner for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but her meteoric landing in Hollywood in 1941 is the stuff of legend.

After seeing her on Broadway, Samuel Goldwyn, the legendary producer, asked her to play the role of Bette Davis's daughter in "The Little Foxes" in 1941. Her performance in the film moved its director, William Wyler, to tell The New York Times that she was the most promising young actress he had ever directed.

She proved his point by being nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for the picture. The next year, she was nominated for best actress for her next role, opposite Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig's wife in "The Pride of the Yankees," and won the Oscar for best supporting actress as the love interest of Greer Garson's war-bound son in "Mrs. Miniver."

Her work included a starring role in Wyler's "Best Years of Our Lives," winner of the best-picture Oscar in 1946; playing opposite Marlon Brando in his first movie, "The Men," in 1950; and creating the character of Charlie, the innocent but suspicious niece of a serial killer, in Alfred Hitchcock's harrowing "Shadow of a Doubt" in 1943.

You can read the complete New York Times obituary by clicking here. (Use mediajunkie as your name and password.)

Gregory Corso and words

Here's the poet Gregory Corso (1930-2001) on his love of words:

See, I know words--beautiful words from the past that people don't know, and it really saves the words. For instance, "scry" we got before, we understand what "scry" is. A pentacle maker--you know who he is? Karcist. K-A-R-C-I-S-T. O.K., that's one for you. Now, the wind that goes through the trees. You know what that is? It's an onomatopoeic shot. You know what it really is? B-R-O-O-L.

RK: In Old English?

GC: Yeah. Thomas Carlyle, really.

From a 1974 interview with Robert King, in The Beat Vision, ed. Arthur Knight and Kit Knight (Paragon House, 1987).

Karcist isn't in the online OED, but Google turns up several sites that confirm Corso's definition. Brool is in the OED, defined as "A low deep humming sound; a murmur." Among the several sample sentences is one from Thomas Carlyle: "List to the brool of that royal forest-voice."

Refreshment

And now, a word from Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908):

Whatever your occupation may be and however crowded your hours with affairs, do not fail to secure at least a few minutes every day for refreshment of your inner life with a bit of poetry.

Writing and index cards

Elaine Fine (my wife), who like me has been carrying around a Hipster PDA, showed me this passage yesterday:

I have index cards and pens all over the house--by the bed, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, by the phones, and I have them in the glove compartment of my car. I carry one with me in my back pocket when I take my dog for a walk. In fact, I carry it folded lengthwise, if you need to know, so that, God forbid, I won't look bulky. You may want to consider doing the same. I don't even know you, but I bet you have enough on your mind without having to worry about whether or not you look bulky. So whenever I am leaving the house without my purse--in which there are actual notepads, let alone index cards--I fold an index card lengthwise in half, stick it in my back pocket along with a pen, and head out, knowing that if I have an idea, or see something lovely or strange or for any reason worth remembering, I will be able to jot down a couple of words to remind me of it. Sometimes, if I overhear or think of an exact line of dialogue or a transition, I write it down verbatim. I stick the card back in my pocket. I might be walking along the salt marsh, or out at Phoenix Lake, or in the express line at Safeway, and suddenly I hear something wonderful that makes me want to smile or snap my fingers--as if it has just come back to me--and I take out my index card and scribble it down.

From Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anchor, 1995).

I've been jotting things down on index cards in my own fashion and pulled things from them to write two poems tonight. (I added Richard Goode's recording of Beethoven piano sonatas for inspiration.) Here are some of the odds and ends that made it into my poems (many others didn't):

"avoidance"

luminous faces

waiting for the other sock to drop

a bunch of motels

a shell of a shell

cheap seats

Yes, I jotted down "avoidance" with quotation marks. When I heard the phrase "cheap seats" today, I knew that I wanted to have it as a title.

[Update: Elaine describes her musical uses for index cards.]

Poems

I have three poems in the most recent Malleable Jangle. You can read them by clicking here.

Martin Denny, r.i.p.

From the New York Times:

Martin Denny, the bandleader who mingled easygoing jazz with Polynesian instrumentation and jungle noises to exemplify the "exotica" sound that swept suburban America in the 1950's and 60's, died on Wednesday at his home in Hawaii Kai, near Honolulu. He was 93.

You can read the obituary by clicking here.