Spring 2025, Issue 4
In this issue, I consider the pros and cons of Zoom, show you my latest collectible books, and “review” a charming collection of John Verney’s humor writing and cartoons.
Va-va Voom! It’s a Zoom World!
“Then the faces of all the other women in our book group popped up, each in a separate little frame, like the celebrities on Hollywood Squares. Some of the women’s mouths were moving soundlessly. Only Evelyn’s frame was empty until she whizzed by, calling [the dog].” – “The Great Escape,” from Hilma Wolitzer’s Today a Woman Went Mad at the Supermarket
My husband recommended Zoom. “You should try a Zoom book event. It’s a necessary skill in the 21st century.”
Is it? They said that about cell phones, but I prefer the landline.
“But why don’t you try Zoom? I mean really.”
I have many answers.
• Djuna Barnes didn’t have Zoom.
• I’m not crazy about the telehealth thing.
• I’m cutting back on screen time.
• I have to go pick up a latte.
Finally I gave in.
I arrived out-of-breath, unfashionably late, because I needed to download the Zoom app first – actually, it downloaded itself – several times! Suddenly I was whisked into the “room” with tiny pictures of people in the margins of the screen. I would have turned off my picture, but I’d been told it was considered rude, and anyway I didn’t know how.
There was a large, eclectic crowd. You know how it is: in any big group, some people “raise their hands” again and again. It’s like a game show: who can push the button the fastest? Now that I was there, I figured I might as well chat, but I could not find the raise-your-hands icon. The other silent ones were probably also hunting for the button. It was a lot of lonely women in their kitchens, if you know what I mean. I do not exclude myself from that category: I was in the living room.
I sent a thank you note to the leaders. Is that the protocol?
Technology seemed fun at first, but now we are technology.
By the way, I was enchanted by Hilma Wolitzer’s short story, “The Great Escape.” (See the epigraph.) Set during the Covid lockdown in New York, this story centers on a group of nonagenarians trying to conduct their book group on Zoom. You can read my review of this 2021 short story collection here.
My Latest “Collectible” Books
I have four words for you, two of them initials: C. K. Scott Moncrieff.
I am obsessed with his 1920s translation of Proust.
Years ago I bought a cheap Modern Library set of Moncrieff’s Remembrance of Things Past. I paid $5 for it. But it disappeared long ago, and I am determined to replace my set. However, it’s cheaper to collect the books separately. So there is much looking in carts outside of bookstores, and crawling on floors covered with books in overstuffed bookstores.
So far I’ve found Cities of the Plain, the fourth book in the series, in the 1954 edition. The book jacket is lovely: no bent corners, no rips. And I’m fascinated by the list of titles inside the book jacket. Actually I have some of these old Modern Library editions: Webb’s Precious Bane, H. G. Wells’s Tono-Bungay, etc.
My other find is a tiny Everyman’s Library edition of George Eliot’s Adam Bede. It is adorable, even smaller than my old Modern Library book. Having read five new books lately, only one of them excellent, I must return to the classics. I have six different pairs of glasses, so I should be able to read the tiny print with no problem.
Verney Abroad
I love John Verney’s illustrations. I was and am hooked on his smart, witty children’s novels, Friday’s Tunnel and February’s Road, about the Callendar family. Mr. Callendar is a journalist who investigates slimeball politicians, etc., and his oldest son and daughter, Friday and February, investigate on their own. The police interview February at one point. Paul Dry publishes these two masterpieces by Verney and his memoir, Going to the Wars.
I picked up this strange little book, Verney Abroad, in a book bin outside a shop. It is amusing travel writing, complete with illustrations and cartoons. It has only 95 pages, and I wish there were more. It is VERY slight.
john Verney also invented the Dodo Pad, “a combined memo-doodle-engage-diary-message-ment book” which cannot be replicated electronically and is still going strong.
C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s “Remembrance…” is nearly as much Scott Moncrieff as Proust (that’s true of all the translations by him I’ve read). There’s an interesting biography by his great-great-niece Jean Findlay
Perhaps I’ll find a Dodo pad one day.
I know there’s even controversy about the translation of the title but “Remembrance of Things Past” is so much more poetic than “In Search of Lost Time.” People do have strong feelings about translation, though, and different “ethics” about when to translate more loosely.