I did that-and he explained that she wasn’t So, when IĮxplained how much I wanted to see her, someone at the University told me toĬontact this particular scholar who had been visiting her. Proust (the translated version of her book hadn’t yet appeared). Had, in fact, translated passages from to distribute in a graduate seminar in Proust-about her time with him-was something I’d read over and over, and Occurs to me that maybe I could somehow get in touch with Celeste-who was still Is three, and the four of us are in Paris where I’m on a teaching exchange at Here’s the background: Ilya is eight, Dmitry (And have published a study comparing Proust I wrote my dissertation on his novelĪnd have taught it-in its seven-volume entirety-over a dozen times. Have to know that I was immersed in Proust’s work-and life-for a great many Woman lived, day in and day out-and especially when her husband was away forįour years at war-with Marcel Proust for the years of his life when he was hardĪt work trying to complete his great novel. When the narrator is writing his novel and when Françoise is still with him. Maid Françoise, particularly in the sections toward the end of the last volume Time)-and she also figures substantially in his portrayal of the family She was, in her own name, a character in his Celeste Albaret was not only the housekeeper for Marcel Proust. She had been the housekeeper for a novelist. My life was merely over the phone-and with a woman whose claim to fame was that Hope you’re not getting too impatient-I’m not just noodling I’m goingįar, the most intense, most thrilling celebrity experience of Gwendolyn Brooks-who also showed up at SDSU to read her poems. Were living in, and even fed Ilya-who was, I think, two at the time-from his So it was very cool, after his first poetry readingĪt SDSU, when he showed up at a sort of collective that some friends of ours His Uncle Sam hat on the office wall, over my desk. State, had put up a huge poster of Alan in Magazine Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts). (to raise money for Ed Sanders, who was having legal problems with his Had been in the audience several years earlier for his midnight poetry reading That point-and especially if I’d taught it, as I was to do at least half aĭozen times in the ensuing years-it would have been a truly awesomeīeen reading Ginsberg’s work when he gave a reading at SDSU after I'd begun teaching there-and Want you to meet Neal Cassady-and then John added (which I thought was just aīit uncool): “Neal is Dean Moriarty in On Suit as it happened, and looking a bit ill at ease. The office of John Bryan, the editor of an “underground” paper in L.A., Open City-working out the details for aĪrticle of mine that he was going to print-when this guy came in, wearing a It was, I think, the year before Cassady's death, and I was, on that occasion, in Speaking of the Beats, I was certainly awed to chat with Gary Snyder when heĬame to campus to read his work-and no doubt would have been awed when I met NealĪt that point, I had actually read On the When he showed up to read his poetry at SDSU), I was still kind of awed by the fact (as, for example, in several conversations with Allen Ginsberg on occasions Even when I found myself relaxed and taking it pretty much for granted meeting literary celebrities,Īt a later period in my life, was thrilling. Hollywood celebrities I took pretty much for Say, or Elliott Lewis or Peggy Webber or Lurene Tuttle or Hans Conried). Impressed, it was by some of the vastly talented radio actors (like Mel Blanc, Stuttgart, Arkansas, when I was seven or eight, his Westerns had been my very I just pretty much took them for granted.Įlliott’s radio show-because, years earlier, at the Strand movie theater in Welles,” andĤ/9/19, “Ingrid Bergman,”) I was fairly blas é about working with movie and radio stars of that time: Jack Benny,īing Crosby, Irene Dunne, Basil Rathbone, Bob Hope, Jane Powell, Abbot andĬostello. Few notable exceptions (see my "Growing Up in Hollywood" posts for 1/4/19, “Dialects and Mr.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |