Reason #1 Why I Love To Blog: What I Get From My Readers -- Nothing About The Bakken -- Except Peripherally, Perhaps -- Connecting The Kaolin Dots -- October 24, 2016

Updates

Later, 2:56 p.m. Central Time: wow, I should have labeled this post "The Library Page" or "The Book Page."

The original post was written while reading in the Southlake, TX, library earlier this morning/early afternoon. I thought maybe I was overdoing it with books, but I use the blog as my "reminder" and, in some respects, as a "to do" list when it comes to reading.

I thought about deleting the original post, but then thought I would let it be, but would title the post in such a way that Mike Filloon and others who might come here for the Bakken weren't mislead thinking this was a post on the Bakken.

I say all that to say this: this must truly be the day for books. God works in mysterious ways.

When I got home, the mail had arrived. Except for The London Review of Books and a slim little package, it was all junk mail. I went through the London Review quickly, saving the best for last, the little package. A reader had asked for my mailing address to send me a book, so I knew this was that.

Wow, what an inspirational book. For someone (me) who absolutely loves his daughters and granddaughters, and especially his youngest granddaughter right now, Sophia, age 2, this was a most perfect book.

Sophia and I are learning to count to ten. There was a recent article in The Wall Street Journal about kids who learn to count on their fingers do well in math, contrary to much myth otherwise. And then this book came, You Don't Need 10, by Katie Taylor Wyman, born, raised, and still residing in Williston. This is a small book about Paisley, four years old at the time the book was published, and her family in Williston. The book just came out, copyright 2016.

It's a keeper. If interested: Books On Broadway in Williston. A great Christmas stocking stuffer, by the way.

Favorite picture in the book: Dad and Paisley fishing, having just caught ... a fish. I would have identified it by name, but I don't know my fish. The fishing picture/story is important; it pops up again in a later chapter.
 

Original Post

 

A word search for "kaolin" on the blog resulted in four "hits":

• the Wittgenstein Vitrine at the Dallas Museum of Art, February 26, 2016
• still looking for another proppant source closer to home, December 31, 2012
• kaolin-rich clay in Dunn County, Stark County, October 14, 2012
• CARBO Ceramics, October 3, 2012

Now, two books that I will be writing about over the next few days (weeks?) and putting that information here -- until I get bored and move on to something else.

• The Hare With Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal, c. 2010, DDS: 920 DE
• The White Road, Edmund de Waal, c. 2015, reviewed at The New York Times

A word search for "petunse" on the blog: zero hits, as expected.
Also:

• UND Pottery, on the net. 
• At wiki: petuntse. 

Most of my future notes on Edmund de Waal's books, The Hare with Amber Eyes and The White Road will be followed elsewhere, although I may occasionally add notes on the MDW. 

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Note for the Granddaughters

Wow, talk about coincidental. One of my favorite movies is Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, a story that includes an imagined meeting / relationship between Hemingway and Fitzgerald in Paris. In that movie, it's easy to miss, but one of the characters mentions "Gustave Caillebotte," though if I recall correctly, only mentioned his last name.

I first heard of Caillebotte some months ago through a spectacular Caillebotte exhibit at the Kimball Fine Arts Museum in Ft Worth, Texas, something I've talked about several times on the blog.

Today, while reading Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes I was pleasantly surprised to see a couple of pages devoted to Caillebotte and a small, black and white reproduction of one of the paintings that highlighted the exhibit: "Le pont de l'Europe," painted in 1876. 

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Hemingway vs Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship

Scott Donaldson

c. 1999

DDS: 920 DON 

Future updates at this post. 

Chapter 1
Loveshocks: At Home
Page 15

Their childhoods, side-by-side

Chapter 2
Loveshocks: Jiltings
Page 30

Coming of age, side-by-side

Chapter 3
A Friendship Abroad
Page 51

Edmund Wilson first brought Hemingway's prose to Fitzgerald's attention. 

Chapter 4
Oceans Part
Page 109

Fitzgerald's side trip to Hollywood and then he resumed his campaign to advance Hemingway's career.

Chapter 5
1929: Breaking the Bonds
page 123

The stock market crash; both the Fitzgeralds and the Hemingways were living in Paris. And it all begins to fall apart.

Chapter 6
Long Distance
Page 161

Although the Hemingways and the Fitzgeralds were back in America for most of the 1930s, they never got back together.

Chapter 7
Afternoon of an Author
Page 189

Fitzgerald advised to take the mountain air for his health, and in much of 1935 and 1936 he was in Asheville, western North Carolina.

Chapter 8
Alcoholic Cases
Page 222

Alcoholics, side-by-side.

Chapter 9
That Prone Body
Page 252

The author reviews the three distinct states of the Fitzgerald-Hemingway relationship, and then introduces a fourth stage that others have not identified: the relationship after Fitzgerald's death. It continued in a most interesting fashion.

Chapter 10
The Spoils of Posterity
Page 272

Faulkner enters the picture. In 1947, Faulkner, while at the University of Mississippi, ranked or named the top American authors: Wolfe, Dos Passos, Caldwell, Hemingway, and himself. In that elite group,he ranked Wolfe at the top, and Hemingway at the bottom.

Chapter 11
The Master and the Actor
Page 303

The stark differences between Fitzgerald and Hemingway.