The Year In (and out of) Reading, Part 1
A literary journey of quixotic inconstancy meets a life path of hard practicalities
I’ve read more than 120 books so far in 2024, nine of those books in January, during which month I also house/dog sat a total of fifteen days for three different families, took three people including myself to six doctor appointments, drove various nephews to and from work about half a dozen times, and performed the quotidian tasks that fill the days and hours at which one looks back in the last chapters of one’s life, a life mostly unremarkable, and asks one’s self, “What the hell was I doing all those years?”
Well, at least I will be able to answer, “Mostly, I was reading.”
In January I read my first Erle Stanley Gardner PERRY MASON novel: THE CASE OF THE SUBSTITUTE FACE. I like old-time detective novels. Ross Macdonald, Ross Thomas, Kurt Steel, Dashiell Hammett. I like a flawed protagonist. Quick read. Hard edges. You know what you’re getting. That said, I remember nothing about this Perry Mason case except the atmosphere in which I was able to wallow while I read it. Sometimes it’s not the writing so much as it is the memories of a particular time in my life that reading certain kinds of books brings to the front of my increasingly addled brain. Old-school detective novels — which I try to buy used in tattered paperback editions, the more foxed the better — conjure black and white comfort TV and films, the book rack at Read’s Drugstore (where I’d spend my allowance on books I learned to keep out of sight after my mother once took from me DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE), and the unused rooms in my aunt Sissie’s home where I was allowed to hide away, reading for hours and hours.
I haven’t the childhood memories to explain why I am so enamored of John Sandford novels, but I read two of his Lucas Davenport/Virgil Flowers thrill-rides in January. I think, with Sandford, as with Lee Child’s REACHER series, Gregg Hurwitz’s ORPHAN X series, and David Baldacci’s 6:20 MAN thrillers, the “heroes” are so far removed from anything resembling any reality I’ve ever known, the way they overcome ridiculously deadly odds against them situations, is cathartic in that the somewhat good guys win over the completely evil villains and, right now, there’s too little of that in the real world.
And also in the procedural, mystery, crime novel category, I read the second in the Jonathan Ames DOLL series after having read the first in December 2023, and I also read Sarah Caudwell’s THUS WAS ADONIS MURDERED, which I liked, but not as much as everyone else seemed to, and so it was one of those books, after which I read them, I felt somehow less erudite than I ought to be.
I read a few other books which fell into the category of “oh you’ve never read [fill in the blank]” and so, I do, and did, and often I feel like, “meh”, and in that category, GIRLS, by John Bowen — though it was less meh than many in this category, and THE UNSPEAKABLE SKIPTON, by Pamela Hansford Johnson, which was meh to me(h).
And so, of those and a few others, nothing I read in January was as wonderful as seeing Audra McDonald in concert January 30. I had heard that she was singing ROSE’S TURN in concert and I waited and wished all through the night. She didn’t. I was disappointed and became even more so when she said in the press that the rumors about her playing Rose in GYPSY were just that: rumors. Lo and behold, here it is December, and she’s in previews and I’ve been sent three bootlegs of her singing ROSE’S TURN. I don’t think I’ll get to see it. But you know what, I’m not complaining.
Me and GYPSY … we already have plenty of history.
I was thirteen when my aunt, Sissie (again) took me to see Angela Lansbury in GYPSY at one of the theater in the round summer venues nearby. I loved everything about it, and Miss Lansbury directed much of the end of ROSE’S TURN to me. She was magic. I got “Someone tell me when is it my turn/Don’t I get a dream for myself?” right at me, and then she turned, rotated, and came back to me for the final two “FOR ME”s and the freeze at the end. (The ROSE’S TURN portion starts around 9 minutes, 15 seconds.)
Funny, isn’t it, the woman who gave me my first in-person1 musical theatre diva fanatic reaction/crush, later turned up as a weekly-cozy-mystery story detective, and I’m a huge fan of those as well.
After Miss Lansbury finished me for normal life, as time went on and I floundered and flitted and flailed and flew and flagellated and flawed and flamboyantized and flim-flammed and flubbed and flopped and flipped and flounced and flummoxed myself through life, finally becoming the flaneur I am today, I directed GYPSY twice. Badly, both times. I saw many Rose portrayers: Donna Migliaccio at Signature Theatre, near DC, in which production the Baby June was played by one of my students. I saw Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone, although when I saw Miss LuPone she was at Lincoln Center, the last night of the concert run before the fully-staged revival. That same day I had seen the final performance of GREY GARDENS, which was my sixth visit to that show.
So, if I don’t see Audra, I mean, no complaints. Hell, it occurs to me, I had my turn, I had dreams for myself and some of them came true, and I guess, looking back in these final chapters of my life when asking myself “what the hell did I do with my life? What did it get me?” along with “I was reading” I can say, “I was watching some amazing divas in some glorious musicals. And I sang a couple of songs, and did a diva turn or two myself, along the way.”
Not to mention, Audra once sang a personalized Happy Birthday to me. It’s true. My dearest, A — who also happened to be the person who took me to see Audra on January 30 — won a Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids auction, the prize of which was Miss McDonald doing a personal birthday greeting. Oh, and Barbara Cook told me (via her personal assistant) that what I’d written about her was her favorite piece of writing anyone had ever penned about her. So, there. And that. Books, and divas, and songs sung, and an aunt like Sissie, and a friend like A. Yeah. My turn. It’s been had. And a mighty good one it has been.
And so, here I am, just past one thousand words — okay, 250 words past one thousand words — and I’ve promised myself to make these dispatches more frequent and shorter. So, I’ll stop here and get to more 2024 books and looking back on my own life chapters in future posts. And I promise not to do a post for each month of the past year. Well, I’ll try not to.
Muchmuchmuchlovelovelove2. Thank you for reading, and, here I am, going.
I don’t think I need to tell you around whom my first musical theatre diva fanaticism focused, I mean, I’m a gay man of a certain age. So, first there was Judy, then there was Barbra, then there was Liza, then there was … but those were the ones before Miss Lansbury.
The triple much and love thing, MUCHMUCHMUCHLOVELOVELOVE, has somehow become how I sign all my cards and letters and a lot of my texts. And I don’t think we can have too much muchness when it comes to love, so, I’m using it here, too.