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Defining Style

Emphasizing personal style, Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.
Emphasizing personal style, Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.
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MusicArts & Culture

Searching for the story of a raw talent

Review by James Dickerson

Born at the turn of the century, Emmett Miller was a Georgia-raised blackface entertainer who recorded a string of records, mostly in the 1920s, that helped to fill the creative void between ragtime and jazz. Stylistically, he was neither blues nor country, black nor white. Think yodeling blues singer. Talent-wise, he was neither good nor bad mostly just something in-between, different enough to strike a chord with those who attended his minstrel performances and purchased his records.

Nick Tosches, contributing editor for Vanity Fair and best-selling author of Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, became obsessed with Miller more than 25 years ago—a fascination to which he admits without embarrassment while researching a book about country music. The fact that Merle Haggard dedicated his album I Love Dixie Blues to Miller was enough to tweak Tosches' curiosity. Not until he discovered one of Miller's recordings in the bargain bin of a New York record store did he understand why Haggard and others felt obligated to tip their hats to the entertainer. He writes, "When I heard Miller's actual voice, forthshining from the coruscations of those slow-spinning emerald grooves, I was astounded, and my search for information on him began in earnest."

To say that Tosches was obsessed with this white man who liked to perform made-up as a black man is an understatement. He pursued Miller with the righteous zeal of a cuckolded husband on the trail of his marital adversary. But, in truth, this gracefully written book contains very little information about Emmett Miller. Rather, it is more about the author's search for some semblance of creative unity and purpose in American music. It's a noble quest, a journey of discovery that is as entertaining as it is enlightening.

James L. Dickerson is the author of Colonel Tom Parker: The Curious Life of Elvis Presley's Eccentric Manager.

 

Born at the turn of the century, Emmett Miller was a Georgia-raised blackface entertainer who recorded a string of records, mostly in the 1920s, that helped to fill the creative void between ragtime and jazz. Stylistically, he was neither blues nor country, black nor white.…

Memoir

One friendship that changes everything

Review by Marianne Peters

Cathie Beck, a single mother of two, had always lived on the solitary knife-edge of poverty. In her late thirties, with her children off at college, she yearned to live the life she had missed while struggling to provide for them, but she needed a posse. She placed an ad in the Boulder Daily Camerafor a new women’s group called WOW, “Women on the Way.”

“I’d invented a women’s group because I needed friends, preferably the instant kind,” she writes. “I don’t know why I thought placing an ad was the answer, except to say that for a great many quiet years I had looked for—yearned for—just one more person who was living the same life I was.”

At WOW, Beck met Denise, and their friendship ignited instantly. Denise, a sophisticated artist who gave generously and lived wildly, enthralled Beck. Denise was a risk-taker, sure of herself but not always wise, and some of her actions led to painful consequences. Despite their misadventures, though, she showed Beck how to live wholeheartedly and headlong. However, there was a catch: Denise had advanced multiple sclerosis, and the symptoms were worsening.

Cheap Cabernet is difficult to set aside, unblinkingly true, funny, coarse and sometimes pensive, with an unpredictable narrative structure that reflects the two women’s meteoric friendship. Beck writes honestly about her past—haunted by poverty—her early motherhood, abandonment, desperate loneliness and an even more desperate desire to give her children a good life. She applies that honesty to her friendship with Denise. Their relationship inspires both hilarity and helplessness, especially as the MS takes its toll and both women struggle to define their place in the shifting sands of each other’s lives.

Relationships are messy, imperfect affairs, Cathie Beck emphasizes. However, because of Denise, Beck learned how to live without fear, to open her heart to others and to occasionally lift a glass of cheap cabernet in the company of friends.

Marianne Peters is a freelance writer who occasionally sips cheap cabernet in Plymouth, Indiana.

Cathie Beck, a single mother of two, had always lived on the solitary knife-edge of poverty. In her late thirties, with her children off at college, she yearned to live the life she had missed while struggling to provide for them, but she needed a…

Biography

Milking the Moon

Review by Pat H. Broeske

Unless you've spent some time in Mobile, Alabama, or were a member of the literati during his years in New York, Paris and Rome, chances are you've never heard of raconteur Eugene Walter. Author Katherine Clark (Motherwit: An Alabama Midwife's Story) came under his spell during the summer of 1991. Over four months she interviewed him three hours each day. The result is Milking the Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet, a fascinating oral biography about a life lived large and impulsively.

So as not to detract from Walter's "voice," Clark has done little of what she calls "editorial meddling." Consequently, the book is chatty and conversational. Walter jumps around in his thoughts, sometimes taking shortcuts with people and places, and the staccato style takes some getting used to. For clarification, Clark offers a "cast of characters" at book's end. (Example: "A little blonde actress whose name I can never remember" turns out to be Debbie Reynolds.) Walter, who died in 1998 at age 76, was an award-winning writer of poetry, novels and short stories with a knack for being in the right place at the right time. The Mobile native lived in Greenwich Village during the 1940s, Paris in the 1950s and Italy in the 1960s, at the height of its sizzling cinema scene. It was amid creative, colorful company that he was most fulfilled, and Walter avidly attended and hosted parties where the guests included a "Who's Who" of such luminaries as Tallulah Bankhead, Anais Nin, Alice B. Toklas and a young Marlon Brando. After moving to Rome, where he appeared in more than 100 movies, including several directed by Federico Fellini, Walter's apartment became known as "the nearest thing to a salon," according to author Muriel Spark (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie).

Along with delightful ruminations about the South including the significance of the front porch Walter's memoir includes sage advice about life in general, such as his impassioned belief that it should be lived exuberantly and without a plan. As his intriguing book details, this unforgettable figure followed his own advice.

Biographer and TV producer Pat H. Broeske is a Los Angeles native with a Southern heritage.

Unless you've spent some time in Mobile, Alabama, or were a member of the literati during his years in New York, Paris and Rome, chances are you've never heard of raconteur Eugene Walter. Author Katherine Clark (Motherwit: An Alabama Midwife's Story) came under his spell…

NonfictionHumor

Stardom to motherhood

Review by Pat H. Broeske

A precocious child actress known for the late 1970s TV series “Family,” and her Oscar-nominated role as Marsha Mason’s daughter in The Goodbye Girl, Quinn Cummings is today a mother, businesswoman (creator of the Hiphugger baby carrier) and blogger. Her “QC Report” has snared national ink and is the springboard for a breezy first book. Part memoir, part mom-ish ruminations, Notes from the Underwire: Adventures from My Awkward and Lovely Life is also salted by an ample dose of wry.

Cummings, who lives in Los Angeles with her baby daddy (whom she refers to in the text as Consort) and their daughter, tackles subjects such as the family dog(s), injuries sustained during gymnastics lessons and negotiating the minefield wrought when little Alice asks how a classmate can have two mommies. Unafraid to be sarcastic or reveal her uncertainties, Cummings dips into lessons learned as a show biz survivor. Though she’ll be saddled with the “former child star” label in perpetuity, she also spent two years as a talent agent. Milking her background in self-deprecating style, she riffs on L.A.’s obsession with looks (“an eye lift at thirty-three doesn’t make you look twenty-three, it makes you look alarmed”), fashion, mansions and more. She visited one lavish house where the daughters’ bedrooms were in a separate wing. That’s one way to create a family of strangers, notes Cummings, who much prefers her family’s more modest abode—and close proximity to motherhood. Which means readers can anticipate a sequel. 

A precocious child actress known for the late 1970s TV series “Family,” and her Oscar-nominated role as Marsha Mason’s daughter in The Goodbye Girl, Quinn Cummings is today a mother, businesswoman (creator of the Hiphugger baby carrier) and blogger. Her “QC Report” has snared national…

LifestylesHealth & Fitness

Living with cancer: helpful books for the journey

Review by Maude McDaniel

First, you fall apart. That's OK. You have just been told by your doctor that you have cancer. On hearing such news, everybody falls apart, in his or her own way. Then you gather up the pieces and try to figure out what to do next. It's a decision facing many Americans, since approximately one-third of women and one-half of men will get cancer during their lifetimes. No one is immune, not even this writer who battled (and survived) uterine cancer. And for many people facing cancer the first step is to amass the most powerful weapon against the disease: information.

Here, we recommend a selection of the best books that offer help and advice for cancer patients and their families. All of these books are written either by health professionals or by cancer survivors (sometimes both), and in each the personal voice is strong, compassionate and empathetic. They share common insights, such as the power of positive thinking (though one is rightly careful to point out that even positive thinking is no magic cure). All are empowering, supplying the information needed for personal decision-making. All deal to some extent with alternative therapies. All include appendices of resources for support groups, information agencies (Internet and other) and health organizations. And all touch on the mind-body connection, some more than others.

Practical advice
Three of our recommended books fall into the practical no-nonsense category, with an emphasis on the technical aspects of the disease. Wendy Schlessel Harpham's Diagnosis: Cancer, Your Guide through the First Few Months is a revised and updated paperback edition of a book first published in 1991. Harpham is both a doctor and a cancer survivor, and she combines the insights of both. The question-and-answer format makes for easy reading, and the questions Harpham poses really are the questions a new cancer patient will ask. Least exhaustive and most manageable of all the books in this group, Diagnosis: Cancer is perhaps the best choice for a first book for the newly diagnosed patient although certainly not the last.

Caregiving: A Step-By-Step Resource for Caring for the Person with Cancer at Home by Peter S. Houts, Ph.D., and Julia A. Bucher, R.N., Ph.D., is designed for caregivers but is equally informative for the patient. Another in the down-to-earth category, it covers treatments (including how to pay for them), instruction and advice for emotional and physical conditions, managing care (for example, a section titled Helping Children Understand) and living with the results of cancer treatments. Well organized, although somewhat repetitive, Caregiving is helpful on the matter of when to get professional help for symptoms and answers questions likely to surface in day-to-day support for cancer patients.

Oncology nurse practitioner Katen Moore, M.S.N., R.N., and medical researcher Libby Schmais, M.F.A., M.L.S., declare a simple goal for Living Well With Cancer: A Nurse Tells You Everything You Need to Know About Managing the Side Effects of Your Treatment: how to feel better during cancer treatment. The emphasis here is not on the treatments themselves but on dealing with their side effects and symptoms. Many cancer patients can maintain a fairly normal life while under treatment; Moore and Schmais enable the patient to play an important role in managing his or her own disease, and in related decision-making. The authors' traditional technical and medical expertise is obvious, but they also give a good deal of attention to complementary and alternative medicines.

Mind-body connection
While all these books acknowledge the importance of treating the whole person, emotionally as well as physically, some authors put more emphasis on the psychological aspects of cancer treatment. Mind, Body, and Soul: A Guide to Living With Cancer is written by Nancy Hassett Dahm, a nurse with broad experience in treating cancer, who seems to take no guff from doctors. Clinical cases illustrate her key points, which include attitudes toward the sick and the dying, managed care, fear, stress and home care. In discussing "the continuum of pain control," Dahm emphasizes that the patient, family and medical staff must work together to assess pain, report it to the doctor and see that proper medication is administered. Chapters on philosophical and religious inspiration reflect her own deeply felt experiences in these areas. Dahm includes a discussion of spiritual events, such as out-of-body episodes, that have been reported by her patients.

Before I had cancer, I already felt I "knew myself," and all my "deepest longings, intentions, and purposes." All I really wanted to do was come out of it safe (in some way) on the other side. Most of us recognize, however, that a traumatic event like dealing with cancer presents an opportunity for personal growth. In The Journey Through Cancer: An Oncologist's Seven-Level Program for Healing and Transforming the Whole Person, oncologist Jeremy Geffen, M.D., makes that kind of personal growth the major goal of the cancer experience. His program aims to produce healing and spiritual transformation in cancer patients "at the deepest levels of your body, mind, heart, and spirit." The author's voice is compassionate and persuasive, especially as heard in clinical cases where he counsels patients and in his own experience with his father's cancer when he was a medical student. Profoundly influenced by 20 years of "exploring the great spiritual and healing traditions of the East," he invites readers to "embrace all the dimensions of who you are as a patient and as a human being." Like the Eastern religions on which it is based, Geffen's program presents sequential levels in the cancer experience, from the first level of learning basic information about the disease to levels of emotional healing, life assessment and the spiritual aspects of healing. Readers may not care to go all the way with Dr. Geffen, but they will find rich resources in joining him for some part of the journey.

Dr. Jimmie Holland's The Human Side of Cancer: Living with Hope, Coping with Uncertainty combines all the best parts of this category and reveals an independent streak. Top psychiatrist at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Holland has tired of the universal emphasis on positive thinking and includes a whole chapter on the "tyranny" of the truism, tackling in the process the idea that mind-body connection means you bring your cancer on yourself. Many anecdotal illustrations ease the reading and further her purposes, which include dealing with the diagnosis, societal myths, treatments and unique chapters on surviving cancer, dying from cancer and the grief of dying patients and their families. Holland's book is less technical than some, but it's wise and warm and a stand-out in the genre.

Not too long ago there were few technical and spiritual resources for newly diagnosed cancer patients; now a wealth of information floods bookstores and Web sites. That is hardly a cause for celebration but certainly one for gratitude.

Maude McDaniel is a longtime BookPage reviewer who writes from Cumberland, Maryland.

 

First, you fall apart. That's OK. You have just been told by your doctor that you have cancer. On hearing such news, everybody falls apart, in his or her own way. Then you gather up the pieces and try to figure out what to do…

Business & Finance

Harry Hoffman

Interview by Jan Keeling

After years in the business of distributing, then retailing books, Harry Hoffman decided to write one himself. The Pocket Mentor grew out of his empathy for young people who have taken jobs in the world of business but do not have a clear idea of what the business world is about he says he used to be one of them. He wrote The Pocket Mentor for such young people—as well as for older managers who feel their careers have stagnated but may not understand why. BookPage spoke with Hoffman by telephone.

BookPage: How did you get into the book business?

Harry Hoffman: I was very lucky. I started out as an FBI agent and left the Bureau to sell soap to retail grocery stores in New York City. Eventually, I found my way into the library supplies business. I was approached at a library convention and was asked if I would be interested in talking to some people at Ingram Book Company in Nashville. I visited Ingram Book Company, liked the people I met, and three months later moved to Nashville. I wanted to try new, different ways of doing business, and I was fortunate that the owners of the company let me have the freedom to run the company in ways I thought best. This was new for me. I had not had this freedom at other places. I believe that if the owners had not given me the freedom to try new ways of doing things, Ingram Book would not be in business today. Many companies and owners today would benefit from this approach.

BP: What do you think makes book people special?
HH: Book people are very intelligent and dedicated to their business. They are outstanding, smart, nice people, and very nice to deal with . . . without exception.

BP: What advice can you give to struggling independent bookstores?
HH: An independent that is not strong in its particular niche and is not in a highly populated area may have a difficult time surviving the arrival of a superstore. But I think many independents could convert into superstores themselves. Find a big empty building in a fairly good location with parking, take more space, put in a cafe. This is not difficult. A good strong independent can work on getting financing from banks and good terms from publishers, and use creativity and imagination to find a location that is not too expensive. If the independent has been solid in its community, there are probably people in the area who would like to sponsor a thriving local bookstore. Most important, the bookstore owner should examine the need to make his or her store or concept better than anyone else's. People who are creative about their bookstore concept and inventive about securing capital have a better chance of surviving as independents.

BP: Is there an industry-changing idea you thought of while you were in the business that you still think should be implemented?
HH: Short books! This is the biggest opportunity that publishers have, and I've been preaching it for years. Publishers need to look at their competition, not only at other publishers, but at all the other things that are competing with books for a person's time: TV, computers, the Internet . . . with all the other demands on time, 300-to-400-page books can be overwhelming. Publishers should continue their publishing programs but also consider developing short-book imprints. If I were in a position to do so, I would start a short book company immediately, publishing short books on many subjects, getting excellent well-known authors to write the books. Instead of taking a year to write a book, an author might write two or three books in a year.

BP: Your book is short . . .

HH: Well, yes, and I hope young people will be able to glean a few things from it . . . and I hope high-quality short books of all kinds will be written by authors better than I. Harry Hoffman developed a small company that served as the Tennessee Book Depository into the largest book wholesaler in the world (Ingram Book Company), and then went on to take the Waldenbooks chain from an unimpressive number-two position among book retailers to a successful number one by the time he took early retirement in 1991.

After years in the business of distributing, then retailing books, Harry Hoffman decided to write one himself. The Pocket Mentor grew out of his empathy for young people who have taken jobs in the world of business but do not have a clear idea of…

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