Capote, Colette, and the Art of Gift Giving

On Tuesday, December 7^th, at 7pm, our Used Books Buyer Brad Craft will be reading Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory,” at the U-District Store. This will be Brad’s fifth year favoring us with his rendition of Capote’s bittersweet holiday story. If you’ve never attended one of his live readings before, then I whole-heartedly recommend you swing by for this seasonal treat. I will be in attendance, and hope to see many of you there as well.

But ever since I began working at University Book Store, it is another of Capote’s pieces that comes to my mind, particularly during the Holiday season when shoppers flood the store in search of gift recommendations. It is his short essay “The White Rose,” wherein Capote recounts his visit with the legendary French author Colette, shortly after the publication of his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms. Upon entering Colette’s bedroom, “as my hostess was an elderly partial invalid who rarely left her bed,” the usually brash Capote found himself timorous, tongue-tied, and unable to look directly at Colette. Instead, he found his attention drawn to her collection of antique, crystal paperweights. “There was perhaps a hundred of them covering two tables situated on either side of the bed….” Noticing his interest, she is able to draw him into conversation by explaining her fascination with these “snowflakes,” as she calls them.

She ultimately gives him one, the eponymous white rose, as a present: “By so doing she arranged for a financially ruinous destiny, for from that moment I became a ‘collector’….” Capote then goes on to relate his own passion for these objets d’arts, before ending the essay with the revelation that he originally tried to refuse Colette’s gift. “…[W]hen I protested that I couldn’t accept as a present something she so clearly adored, [she replied] ‘My dear, really there is no point in giving a gift unless one also treasures it oneself.’”

Since first reading those words, I have tried to employ this advice whenever possible, and found it to be most rewarding. So, if this Holiday season you wish to go beyond the various lists submitted to you by loved ones, then, once more, I whole-heartedly recommend following Madame Colette’s example. 

--Dan, Events

The Snow Is Snowing, The Wind Is Blowing, But I Can (NOT) Weather the Storm

Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" will not be making one more venture off the bookshelf this year.  Your humble reader lives in West Seattle and can't get out.  Snow, it seems, does not like me, my tiny car, or Truman Capote.  So the scheduled reading, in Mill Creek, Thursday, December 18th, at 7 PM, won't be happening.

To anyone planning to attend Thursday, I can only offer my sincere apologies and my hope that you might find time, this busy Holiday Season, to read Capote's little masterpiece amongst yourselves.  You don't need me to make the story magical.

Maybe next year, we can try again.  Meanwhile, a Merry Christmas and sincere regrets to all our friends in Mill Creek who might have planned to come out and hear "A Christmas Memory" Thursday night.

Taking Truman Capote on the Road

So, tonight, Thursday, December 11th, at 7PM, I take A Christmas Memory on the road for the first time, to our Bellevue branch.  The question is: will anyone follow?  Never done a reading in Bellevue.  Have no idea if there will be an audience or not.  Hope so.

It's not Capote's little masterpiece I doubt.  And it's not the good people of Bellevue.  The Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer newspaper listed the event in last Sunday's entertainment section -- but didn't say that this reading was at the Bellevue store!  So no one may know to go there.  So...

If you haven't heard me read this story before, and if you're at all curious, do please join me. If you don't, whoever you are, I plan to read aloud to any poor soul who happens by; booksellers, babies, random customers.  Imagine the reaction: some perfectly nice customer, looking to pick up a calendar for his grandmother (all our calendars are 20% off, by the way,) or pick up a copy of The Uniform Plumbing Code (we carry that in Bellevue too,) suddenly accosted by a strange little bearded figure, loudly imitating an elderly Southern lady, talking about "fruitcake weather!"  

I have no shame.  I'll do it, if need be.  I'll make some unsuspecting person cry, I can do it with this story, believe me, even if I have to hold said random person down, or follow them down into the parking garage (parking's free at the Bellevue store, by the way.)

Oh dear.

So spare the unsuspecting patrons of the UBS Bellevue, and come hear me read.

I hear "The Chimes" at midnight yet again...

Every year at the bookstore, I read Truman Capote's little sentimental masterpiece, "A Christmas Memory" aloud, to celebrate the Holiday Season, as we call it in retail.  Years and years ago, when I was living in San Francisco, I went every year to hear just such a performance at a bookstore there. Now that reading was given by a wonderful retired actor.  Mine, alas, is entirely amateur, if somewhat... practiced, shall we say? by now.  This has become a tradition for me and the bookstore and I confess, I look forward to it every December.  Whatever my shortcomings as a reader, I like to think, as they used to say on the "Society Page" in my little hometown newspaper about any local event other than a funeral, "a good time will be had by all."

This year's reading of "A Christmas Memory" will be Wednesday, December 3rd, at 7PM at the bookstore in Seattle, with encores at Bellevue & Mill Creek 

 (check the Reading Aloud Events Schedule for a reading near you.)  Please do come.

Additionally, on Tuesday, December 9th,  at 7PM, I will be reading Charles' Dickens' 

"The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In."  This will be a first for me.  Back in February, I helped celebrate the Great Man's Birthday with two selections from his novels, both taken from his own adaptations for his celebrated public readings.  Again, I like to think, "a good time was had by all."  (At least, no one complained to the management about the noise.) Emboldened, I added this reading of Dickens' second Christmas Book -- written the year after "A Christmas Carol," -- to my

 schedule.  The exceptionally good people in our Events Department indulged me yet again, bless 'em.

The only problem now is adapting Dickens' reading copy of "The Chimes" for an audience unfamiliar with the story.  Had I simply read the more justly famous "Carol," I need not have spent, as I have, so many long nights typing, scribbling and sweating to communicate something of the true magic and power of this lesser known work to a contemporary audience.  Dickens' didn't have this problem when he did his readings of "The Chimes."  In the first place, he was, by all reports, a truly remarkable actor and his readings of his own work were considered one of the wonders of the Victorian Age.  Oh.  In the second place, Dickens' audience knew his other Christmas Books -- he wrote five all together -- as well as they knew his "Carol."  Certainly, now as then,  everyone knows Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the rest as well as any characters in the history of literature.  But contemporary  audiences

 probably don't know this second story or dear old Toby "Trotty" Veck at all.

Well, you should.

And so, I'm up tonight again, typing, scribbling, etc., in the hope of doing justice to Charles Dickens, Toby, and The Chimes.   I won't, of course, but I'll do my best.

I hope you can come and hear the result.