Last Friday I went to "First Friday
a Classic Experience" at the Mill Valley library.
Kevin Smokler the author-speaker that night threw out a trivia question:
"Where did Ray Bradbury write his book Fahrenheit 451?"
I shouted out
"at the library"...
I was right and so I won a copy of Kevin's new book "Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books You Haven't Touched Since High School."
In between working, being on vacation, doing yoga, seeing friends, and celebrating birthdays, I've been reading this great book all week.
I've read essays about David Foster Wallace, Maya Angelou, Sherman Alexie, Edith Wharton, Philip Roth,
and why "To Kill a Mockingbird Makes a Great Father's Day Gift."
Smokler is one hell of a great essayist and he loves good books. He makes you think about them in ways you never would have never imagined. Quirky, magical and mysterious ways...yum!
I thought I understood something about Franz Kafka's writing (after all I spent a whole day at the Kafka Museum in Prague in 2008). Smokler's essay "A Family of Giant Insects" puts an entirely new spin on the classic "The Metamorphosis."
Kevin wrote:
"Kafka seems to be saying that if a family member wakes up one morning as a giant insect, don't be surprised. That enormous bug is just an understudy for the mystery that is family itself."
How utterly synchronistic for my latest current realizations about familial lack of communication...
The man sitting next to me smelled simply divine. Finally I asked him
what scent he was wearing.
"It's Kiehl's something or other..."
Next Monday I stopped by their store in Corte Madera and asked for samples to try to figure out which one he had been wearing.
After a week of sniffing my samples I've dècided it is Musk for Men and I want to buy some.
The saleswoman said
"scent is so powerful
it is such an aphrodisiac"
I smiled.
(Do you think she has read any
Proust lately?)
