Ayun Halliday’s Holiday Gift Suggestion

It’s a delight to welcome Ayun Halliday back to these pages—some years back, she wrote a delightful guest essay about her pet peeves in foodie memoirs. She’s just published The Zinester’s Guide to NYC, a compendium of tips on what to do and where to do it from nearly two dozen zine creators who make the city their home; you’re as likely to find listings for the best open mic nights as you are for fine art museums, along with sections on the city’s best 99-cent stores and the locations of a few choice photobooths. Ayun has several events planned at New York City bookstores in December 2010; be sure to visit her website for details!

The book I’m hoping to get this holiday season, possibly by putting it under the tree with my husband’s name attached is Maira Kalman’s And the Pursuit of Happiness. I have no doubt it will be transcendent, but after several misfires wherein I gave someone a book I had yet to read myself, I’m going to play it safe by recommending one of this prolific author’s earlier books, The Principles of Uncertainty. It remains one of the best presents I ever received. Articulating all the reasons I love it and its author would take me all the way to New Year’s Eve, so I’ll limit myself to but a paltry few.

Her zest for life triumphs over the most Eeyore-ish of moods: “I return to New York. Tired. Sad. The world is coming to an end. What to do? What to do? I know what to do. Spend the day on the subway. Oh wonderful life-affirming two-dollar subway ride.” She documents the smallest details of the passing parade as if that’s what matters most (“the first superlative tassel”); she rescues dead people from obscurity with just a few words: “My favorite obituary is that of Megan Boyd. She lived in a tiny village in Scotland and spent her life making exquisite flies for the local fisherman and for Kings.” She assigns fierce sentimental—and thus genuine—value to things others throw away and forget: “We could examine my collection of sponges from around the world. Or the mosses of Long Island, which is an intact collection that I bought in a bookstore. It came in a shoebox that once held a pair of 7-1/2 B pumps.” She draws comforting connections, even when the points she is connecting are terribly sad: “Gershwin died at the age of 38 of a brain tumor. He is buried in the same cemetery as my husband.”

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3 December 2010 | gift ideas |

Read This: An Object of Beauty

My reaction to the backlash against Steve Martin’s appearance at the 92nd St. Y earlier this week is, I admit, colored by my perspective as a literary event organizer. I was not present for Deborah Solomon’s interview of Steve Martin, which apparently frustrated audience members who wanted to hear less about Martin’s long familiarity with the art world and how it’s reflected in his new novel, An Object of Beauty, and more about, for lack of a better summation, Steve Martin being “Steve Martin.” So I don’t know, maybe the interview was terrible—I’ve certainly had my negative reactions to Solomon’s work in the past—but based on what little I know it sounds an awful lot like the interview Martin did with Charlie Rose, which I have to tell you was pretty riveting stuff, if you’re seriously interested in creativity (and applying yourself to being creative) and about art.

So I’m a bit disappointed in the 92Y for immediately agreeing with the protestors in the audience that the event was a disappointment and giving everybody a refund. Although one always tries to put on a show that speaks to the audience’s interests, that doesn’t mean the audience is always right. Now, maybe there was some miscommunication between the 92Y administration and the “on-stage talent,” or between the venue and the audience, about what the evening’s theme was going to be, and maybe there wasn’t; again, I’m not privy to any of those kinds of details. But I do know that it’s hardly a secret that Steve Martin has been a thoughtful, informed collector of art for decades, and a fiction writer of gradually increasing critical regard over the last decade, and if he wants to spend an hour talking about art and literature at your cultural venue, that’s a pretty good get.

(UPDATE: Soon after posting this, I got feedback directing me to eyewitness accounts identifying Deborah Solomon as the problem, specifically that, as an interviewer, she was “boorish, blundering, unperceptive and obscure.” Although I wasn’t there, based on my experience reading Solomon’s interviews, I concede this to be highly plausible.)

Anyway, the whole thing pretty much guaranteed that An Object of Beauty became my subway reading today; I’m about 100 pages in, and I have to tell you, it’s awfully good. You couldn’t call it a literary revolution—narrators reflecting on the rise and fall of a social climber were probably old hat when Fitzgerald wrote Gatsby—but it’s a solid story set in an affluent New York subculture that would do Dawn Powell proud. The color illustrations of paintings that come up as the plot unfolds—a device Martin confessed to Rose was a way to avoid the pitfalls of trying to use words to describe a purely visual experience—are an excellent touch, and never feel intrusive. I’m very much looking forward to seeing how it all turns out.

(And I’m hardly giving up on the 92Y; in fact, I’m headed there later this month to see Ian Frazier and John McPhee, for what promises to be a fascinating conversation about reportage and nature writing, among other possibilities.)

2 December 2010 | read this |