January 6, 2009 | 3:40 pm

What I read on my vacation

Posted by Tom Teicholz

When last I blogged, I was sitting in my office the week before Christmas, and I just ran out of steam. I had originally planned to work through the holiday and then I just said, why?

So I took the time off.  I stayed at home. I read books for pleasure:

NETHERLAND by Joseph O’Neill — which I liked but, frankly it was not the novel I thought or hoped it would be.  Netherland is a post 9-11 novel about a Dutch born English raised man who working at a financial company in New York and whose family returns to England post 9-11 and his time in New York and his friendship with a Trinidadian who he meets through playing cricket. The novel has been comapred to The Great Gatsby and I see the shadow of that classic on this work, but this is a far more interior work. It is well written, and took all kinds of side trips into areas of arcane knowledge such as cricket history, but in then end was more slight a book, more interior,  and left me feeling unsatisfied.

The English Professor by Jim Harrison, which I enjoyed, perhaps more than I should have. It’s a kind of demented book, a rambling work of a demented unreliable narrator — a 60 year ex-teacher turned farmer whose wife dumps him and he sets off on a road trip — along the way he reunites with a former student — there is plenty of drink and sex and food and plenty of nature writing — and for reasons that are hard to explain as compared to Netherword which had an air of self importance this was slight in all the right ways.

I’m also halfway into “The Widows of Eastwick,” which I both enjoy and somewhat dread. Updike has really written about the vicissitudes of age, and what older Americans do, which is travel and reunite for brief moments with their past in ways that are often disappointing. My dread comes from the feeling that nothing good can come from these characters and an expectation that on any page something bad is about to happen — which is a testmaent to Updike’s continued powers as a writer and a story teller, but still, it doesn’t make me race to pick up and finish the book, so I am proceeding at a leisurely pace with caution.

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December 25, 2008 | 9:08 pm

Lazy me, taking off until Jan 5, 2009

Posted by Tom Teicholz

thought I would be blogging and working straight through the holidays — and trust me there’s stuff to write about:. I want to tell you about recent visits to the restaurants Sushi Zo, Michael Mina’s Louis XIV, Slumdog, the wrester, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, and Jim Harrison’s The English Major — but suddenly I’ve lost steam. I don’t feel like going in to the office, don’t feel like pushing the peanut up the hill with a pencil, as one of my editors used to say.

No, no, no. I’m just going to spend time with family and friends, read more novels that I’ve been wanting to read for pleasure — not work, and take a short trip up north.

Recharge the batteries. Put 2008 behind us. take a few days grace at the start of 2009. Blog to you then!, later

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December 22, 2008 | 7:17 pm

Where’s Geffen?

Posted by Tom Teicholz

Is it my imagination or has David Geffen been extremely silent as of late?

No mention of Geffen in any of the Save MOCA Discussion, despite one of the MOCA outposts being called The Geffen Contemporary.

No mention of Geffen in the LA Times imploding. Remember when he wanted to buy the paper?

No mention of Geffen in the Madoff fraud — Spielberg, yes; Katzenberg, yes; but no Geffen.

And no mention of Geffen in all the Dreamworks financing issues. Spielberg is going into his own pocket to buy out the slate from Paramount, and keep the company afloat until the bridge loans kick in. But no Geffen.

Strange, no?

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December 22, 2008 | 7:11 pm

A beautiful tale of Tzedaka (even if they don’t mention the word)

Posted by Tom Teicholz

On today’s New York Times Op_Ed page there is a beautiful story by Ted Gup about a pseudonymous donor in 1933 Depression era Canton Ohio, who took out an ad in the local newspaper and gave money to those in need in five and ten dollar increments to a total of 75 townsmen and families in need to a total of $50, and the writer who found out 75 years later that his grandfather was the mysterious donor. The writer explains that his grandfather who a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe who made and lost money and was now back on his feet and wanted to share with his fellow citizens in need.

Gup writes of his grandfathers “yuletide” gift and his values but what he doesn’t say and is evident is that his father had been instilled with the virtue — nay the compulsion, of Tzedakah, charity to others.

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