the last book I ever read (Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins, excerpt two)

from Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins:

Murphy loved to describe his first meeting with Cole Porter: “There was this barbaric custom of going around to the rooms of the sophomores, and talking with them to see which ones would be proper material for the fraternities. I remember going around with Gordon Hamilton, the handsomest and most sophisticated boy in our class, and seeing, two night running, a sign on one sophomore’s door saying, ‘Back at 10 p.m. Gone to football song practice.’ Hamilton was enormously irritated that anyone would have the gall to be out of his room on visiting night, and he decided not to call again on this particular sophomore. But one night as I was passing his room I saw a light and went in. I can still see that room—there was a single electric light bulb in the ceiling, and a piano with a box of caramels on it, and wicker furniture, which was considered a bad sign at Yale in 1911. And sitting at the piano was a little boy from Peru, Indiana, in a checked suit and a salmon tie, with his hair parted in the middle and slicked down, looking just like a Westerner all dressed up for the East. We had a long talk, about music, and composers—we were both crazy about Gilbert and Sullivan—and I found out that he lived on an enormous apple farm and that he had a cousin named Desdemona. He also told me that the song he had submitted for the football song competition had just been accepted. It was called ‘Bulldog,’ and of course it made him famous.

Famous, but not entirely accepted at Yale. Although he received the second largest personal allowance of any boy in his class (the largest was Leonard Hanna’s), Cole Porter did not fit easily into the social mold of a Yale man. At Murphy’s insistence, however, he was elected to DKE that year, and soon afterward Murphy persuaded the glee club, of which he was manager, to take Porter in as a sophomore—something that was never done—so that he could sing a new song he had written on the glee club’s tour that spring. The song was the hit of the show. It was a satire on the joys of owning an automobile, and Porter came out in front of the curtain to sing it in the next-to-closing spot, with his hands folded behind him, while the seniors and juniors behind him on the stage went “zoom, zoom, zoom.”

the last book I ever read (Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins, excerpt one)

from Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins:

By the time she was sixteen Sara Sherman Wiborg (she was named for General William Tecumseh Sherman, her mother’s favorite uncle) had learned to speak fluent French, German, and Italian. She was not in the slightest degree impressed by fashionable society, however, and she said just what she thought to everyone. “I love Sara,” Lady Diana said to Mrs. Wiborg. “She’s a cat who goes her own way.” Sara became a great favorite of her mother’s friend Stella Campbell (Mrs. Patrick Campbell), who used to insist that Sara accompany her when she went to buy clothes for one of her theatrical roles. “Sara, darling,” she would say, in her deep, Italianate voice, “does the dress walk? Or does it make me look just like a cigar?” Gerald Murphy said once that although he had known Sara for eleven years before they were married and could hardly relate an incident in his life in which she did not play a part, she had remained so essentially and naively original that “to this day I have no idea what she will do, say, or propose.”

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt eleven)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

We were discussing if Charlton Heston became a saint. “You idealize these people, Storey,” said Hobby. “They’re not so great. Just read the lives of the saints. You’ve find out they’re not so saintly.”

“But maybe they are so saintly.”

He looked at me sideways, askance, with those blue eyes. “You worry me. Look. Nine out of every ten people are crumbs.”

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt ten)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

Nuts call up on the sports radio channel and they say, “Chris, I’ve had it. But I’m in the Rotisserie League, and I’ve made a trade—Strawberry, McReynolds, and Darling for Tim Raines.” Then the announcer says, dead serious, “Really? How’s it working out for you?” etc. etc. and they get in long conversations about it.

So what is going on in my Rotisserie League? Well, I’ll tell you. My team is the New York team, with the listless manager. In my team, he was not fired. Listless, but stalwart, elegant, not a coward, can do the job. Then, a player from last year who agonized over his retirement because he was aging, thirty-six, and then was traded away, who had been known as the heart of the team, who was dashing and glamorous and dark, with a mustache, came back as the first-base coach—we are grooming him to be the manager. The players are elated about it. Strawberry talked to him for hours. As they chain-smoked in the dugout. My dugout is vice-ridden but I like it that way. And I’m the owner, see? Everyone chain-smokes, they play cards, they drink bourbon, they’re allowed to, it’s fun, my manager doesn’t enforce discipline, he doesn't have to, because the players respect him, like a father, and he may be listless, but he is stalwart, and gets the job done.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt nine)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

Actually they did have baseball in New Orleans once. It was about fifty years ago. They were the Pelicans, a minor-league team. Hobby’s father used to go to the games as a boy. His uncle would take him. Hobby’s father was shocked because in the box next to theirs was a priest who smoked cigars, drank beer, and cursed. Mostly, he cursed.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt eight)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

Some people say it is a more antiquated, droll or quaint sport than football, say, being more representative of a sort of bygone era. Football for its violence is more beloved in the South, where they don’t have baseball. Whereas I would think that baseball would suit the South, being rather courtly. But it is more mental or cerebral, than football, say, and that does not suit the South. But even if baseball is more cerebral, everyone is certainly an emotional wreck by the end of the season, agonizing over it all.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt seven)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

New Orleans is very beautiful and very painful. New York is not that beautiful and not that painful. It is just a normal American town. Whereas New Orleans has a caliber of beauty among the massive oaks, at times a vision of paradise, but there is an unvarnished truth about it, and there are your memories and those held dear. I miss the society of my beloved father. I am pursued by my memories. I might be on the midnight train from Penn Station populated by wino lunatics on my way to Orient through the summer crowds, but in my mind’s eye I must set my sights on that white white house beside the palm tree in New Orleans, with its sweet gaiety. I must find my way back.