Friday, December 31, 2021

the last book I ever read (Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah, excerpt five)

from Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah, the 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature:

She transformed everything. I woke up in the morning thinking myself smart and enterprising, instead of alien and depressed. I caught myself in unusual acts of jauntiness: humming as I walked, smiling broadly when a polite twitch of the lips would have done, trying on sunglasses in Boots. When I felt myself unfairly or discourteously dealt with, I swaggered to claim restitution rather than walking away with a sinking heart and averted eyes. My contributions to class-room discussions increased and were even-tempered and thought out instead of being rare, impulsive outbursts that left everyone bemused and at a loss. My seminar leaders beamed at me and I glowered self-importantly. Even my essays acquired a more confident voice: I took a sterm position on creativity and learning, for example, whereas before I would have just repeated the wet-liberal orthodoxies about self-expression spouted in tutorials. My tutor, twisting and turning like an angel on a pin, described this position as classicist, by which I took it that she meant intolerant, but she graded the essay highly.

I could not credit the affection Emma showed me, the praise she heaped on me. I struggled to cling on but it seemed I could do no wrong. Every evening (she had give up the Costmary Grill) she came to my room and we cooked some nameless concoction and talked and worked and played. It seemed the talk could go on and on without end. There hardly seemed a pause, everything merged seamlessly and effortlessly. These evenings were so regular that Emma’s landlady, a loving woman with endless rules about what her student guests could do, began to feel guilty about charging her for dinner – though she still continued to do so. Sometimes she stayed the night, and we murmured away through the long hours, well into the night and sometimes until dawn, as if there would be no tomorrow. She brushed away my embarrassment and temerities and made me laugh about the most improbable things, the most painful things. It was love, headlong stuff.



Thursday, December 30, 2021

the last book I ever read (Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah, excerpt four)

from Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah, the 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature:

Everything went into abeyance with Amelia’s arrival as we all abandoned whatever else we were doing to cluster round the baby while it shitted and screamed. She screamed a lot, so much that I sometimes felt that the revulsion she felt for what she had been landed into was tragic. Everyone said it was normal, or she had colic or whatever, but I could not help feeling that she was raging with self-pity. It didn’t do her any good, of course. She was here, she was wanted, she was loved, she didn’t have a chance. Whenever she was given the opportunity, she clung to her mother’s breast as if to freedom itself. Life’s like that, clinging futilely to the very objects that imprison us.



Wednesday, December 29, 2021

the last book I ever read (Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah, excerpt three)

from Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah, the 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature:

‘Hasn’t it been lovely these last few days?’ Mrs Willoughby said. ‘I hope it lasts, though I don’t expect it will. Have you been in England long?’

Long enough to know how to respond to intimate small talk of that kind. Murmur audibly, smile brightly, say nothing. In general that did not seem to me at the time to be a contemptible philosophy, and there were many occasions when I rebuked myself for failing to live by it more consistently. I felt Emma watching me, waiting for me to take offence about something. I had been well primed for this, to expect to be offended by something her parents were bound to say, or imply, or disguise in an apparently innocent commonplace. Mr Willoughby came up with the goods at once, casually, almost kindly, staring at me with bristly intensity, curious to hear my opinion. ‘I expect there are thousands of darkies in universities these days. It wasn’t like that in my day. Perhaps the odd maharaja’s son, or a young chief. The rest were too backward, I suppose. Now you see them everywhere.’



Tuesday, December 28, 2021

the last book I ever read (Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah, excerpt two)

from Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah, the 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature:

So, back to Holy Matrimony. The joke about that was that Emma and I were not married but had been living in increasingly fractious sin for the last donkey’s years. I mean, it wasn’t all fractious, but the peevish quota could sometimes be significant, and I am not quite sure how it got to be like that. As for Holy Matrimony, we did not just drift into this state of detachment from it, but chose to take it on glare for glare, brazenly outstare middle-class respectability, by which she meant her parents, I’m afraid. Her blows against class were inbred in this way, intimate resentments against family Christmas celebrations, for example, or a loathing for the faintest glimmer of interest in opera, which her parents adored, or sneering contempt for matrimony. She loved music, and had played the piano with real seriousness throughout her years at university, and even now was still at her most intense when listening to a variant performance of a favorite piece. But the briefest snatch of opera made her reach for the power button, making disgusted faces and uttering strong words against the fascist Establishment as she did so. It was something like that with matrimony. I took my lead, as I did in so many things, from Emma. She wanted to be the anti-bourgeoisie rebel and that was fine with me. Everything about her was fine with me.



Monday, December 27, 2021

the last book I ever read (Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah, excerpt one)

from Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah, the 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature:

Here it’s different. Health care from the first to the last day of life, delivered with courtesy and consideration in spacious clinic set out for the patient’s comfort and convenience, and all of it free. And if it’s not really free, then it feels like that. It’s a small comfort which was not work without a struggle but which England now allows herself after the ages of toil and the centuries of hardship it took to build her beautiful ruins. Just stand on the banks of the Thames anywhere between Blackfriars Bridge and Westminster Bridge and look north, and see if your heart is not filled with awe at the labour that has gone into constructing that: the huge spires and great offices and colonnaded vaults and sprawling cloisters and rich pavilions and prim mansions and gilded bridges festooned with lights. Then let your eye wander farther afield, and there are the factories and warehouses and mechanized farms and model towns and chapels, and museums bursting with booty from other people’s broken histories and libraries sprawling with books congregated over centuries. If you compare that to any one of the seething cesspits that pass for cities in the dark place of the world, and take into account the dedicated exertion that made it possible, then as small a comfort as your own doctor does not seem overindulgent.



Friday, December 24, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt seventeen)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

The last time they saw Epstein, they said, “We did not see a despairing, despondent suicidal person.”

That same day, Epstein’s cellmate, Reyes, was transferred out of the Metropolitan Correctional Center and inexplicably moved to a privately run facility in Queens that houses cooperating witnesses.

As night fell, the two corrections officers assigned to monitor Epstein spent several hous playing and shopping on their computers, allegedly unaware that anything suspicious was happening in Epstein’s cell. Both of them then allegedly fell asleep.



Thursday, December 23, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt sixteen)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

Epstein’s relationship with Harvard began in the late 1990s, when he announced that he would give thirty million dollars to launch the Program in Evolutionary Dynamics; researchers in this field apply mathematical formulas to genetics in order to find cures for cancer and other diseases. The program’s director, Martin Nowak, was introduced to Epstein through Stephen M. Kosslyn, then chair of the university’s psychology department.

Kosslyn, who has since left the university, also designated Epstein as a visiting fellow in the Department of Psychology in 2005. The title normally awarded only to an independent researcher registered with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The university later found that Epstein was not qualified, either academically or by university policy, to be in the program.

Altogether, the university received $9.1 million from Epstein between 1998 and 2008, prior to his conviction on underage sex charges. But Epstein was still welcomed at the university following his 2006 arrest, which was prominently reported by its own student newspaper, the Crimson, in July of that same year. Still, Harvard continued to bend its policies to suit Epstein—and his money.



Wednesday, December 22, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt fifteen)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

A series of suspicious events followed. First, the surveillance video of the incident disappeared. Prison officials said it was inadvertently destroyed. Tartaglione had an illegal cell phone, but the government wasn’t releasing its contents. To this day, authorities have never released a report on their investigation into the event.

Epstein’s injuries were not serious, and he was placed on a suicide watch.



Tuesday, December 21, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt fourteen)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

Brad Edwards, who spoke to Trump during his investigation into Epstein, claimed that, according to Trump, the problems between the two started when Epstein hit on the daughter of a Mar-a-Lago club member. Trump got angry and banned him from the resort.

But Epstein’s brother Mark had a different view of Epstein’s relationship with Trump. In a civil deposition, Mark Epstein stated that Trump had flown several times on Epstein’s plane and that the two were good friends.

“I know Trump is trying to distance himself, but they were,” he said, adding that Trump used to comp Epstein’s mother and aunt at one of Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City.



Monday, December 20, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt thirteen)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

In 2015, when Giuffre’s allegations first became public, Dershowitz went on every television program imaginable swearing, among other things, that Epstein’s plane logs would exonerate him. “How do you know that?” he was asked.

He replied that he was never on Epstein’s plane during the time that Virginia was involved with Epstein.

But if the media had checked, they could have learned that he was indeed a passenger on the plane during that time period, according to the logs.

Then he testified, in a sworn deposition, that he never went on any plane trips without his wife. But he was listed on those passenger manifests as traveling multiple times without his wife. During at least one trip, he was on the plan with a model named Tatiana. It might not prove that he had had sex with anyone other than his wife, but it certainly raises questions about his recall.



Sunday, December 19, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt twelve)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

After Epstein’s release from jail, in July 2009, Epstein’s community control, a form of house arrest, was minimal at best. Records show he spent five hours a day at Home Depot and large blocks of time at Sports Authority, even though this was not permitted under the guidelines set by the Florida Department of Corrections. He received permission to travel by plane to his island off the coast of St. Thomas, and to visit his mansion in New York for business and legal reasons. His state probation officers never seemed concerned.

Once, Epstein was stopped by a Palm Beach police officer when he was walking along South Ocean Boulevard during the middle of the day. Epstein told the officer he was walking to work, but the route he was traveling was not in the direction of downtown West Palm Beach. He should have been arrested on the spot, but his probation officer intervened, saying he was allowed to have exercise.



Saturday, December 18, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt eleven)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

Bradshaw, who has been sheriff since 2004, has long been considered one of the most powerful politicians in Palm Beach County. For years, he has mounted what I saw as a relatively successful gaslighting campaign about his role in Epstein’s work release. Bradshaw maintains that, despite having a super-connected notorious sex offender in his jail, he didn’t know anything about the benefits that Epstein received on his watch.

Bradshaw’s spokeswoman, Teri Barbera, had given me a copy of the work release policy to clarify the agency’s policies regarding sex offenders. But the document she sent me for my series clearly noted that convicted sex offenders were not eligible for work release in Palm Beach County.

When I pointed out to her that the department violated its own policy, she tried to claim that Epstein wasn’t a registered sex offender until he was released and had to formally register. The problem with this argument is that the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office had never given any other offender charged with a sex crime work release. Only Epstein.



Friday, December 17, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt ten)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

Contrary to what Belohlavek told the judge, neither the girl at the heart of the state plea deal nor her lawyer were ever told about the deal.

All along, everyone had assumed that the victim who testified before the state grand jury—the only victim to testify, Jane Doe 1—was the girl who was the victim in the plea. Her lawyer, Spencer Kuvin, happened to hear about Epstein being in court that day and wanted to serve him with her civil lawsuit, so he appeared at the hearing.

Kuvin said he, too, assumed that at least one of the victims mentioned at the hearing was his client. In truth, Epstein’s lawyers had somehow convinced state prosecutors to switch the victims. No one would learned about this until years later.



Thursday, December 16, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt nine)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

On June 20, 2008, Jeffrey Epstein walked into the Palm Beach County courthouse with his attorney, Jack Goldberger, at his side. At the bench before them that morning, however, was not the judge who had been assigned to the case a year earlier—it was a retired senior judge who filled in.

One of the enduring mysteries of the Jeffrey Epstein case is how and why the judge assigned to Epstein’s criminal case, Sandra McSorley, was absent on the very day that Epstein entered his plea and was sentenced.

The transfer of such a high-profile case from an experienced criminal judge—with a history of scrutinizing plea deals—to another judge who wasn’t fully briefed on the case represented another break for Epstein that was probably no accident.



Wednesday, December 15, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt eight)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

Kenneth Starr, the former independent counsel charged with investigating Clinton’s financial dealings with the Whitewater Land Company, as well as his sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, was the driving force behind Clinton’s 1998 impeachment.

But the puritan compass that led Starr to climb upon a God-fearing perch and hold Clinton in contempt must have disappeared into his bank account when he agreed to help one of the most prolific and wealthiest sex predators in history.

Starr—and, indeed, all of Epstein’s lawyers—has remained unapologetic for the tactics he employed in pursuit of liberty for a privileged man of perversion.



Tuesday, December 14, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt seven)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

But Edwards had been burned by the media at least once before. In 2015, Edwards had traveled with Giuffre, whom he was representing at the time, to New York for an interview with ABC News. Giuffre, dressed in a new white suit, was interviewed at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in New York, telling her story on camera for the first time, to reporter Amy Robach.

But the story never saw the light of day. ABC claimed that “not all of the reporting met our standards to air,” and while the story was shelved at the time, it remained one they claimed they continued to probe with the intention to air. But in reality, a number of influential people, including Dershowitz and representatives of Prince Andrew, objected to the story, and ABC killed it.

I didn’t really, at the time, believe that any media network would have succumbed to pressure to ignore or drop such an important story. I just told myself that decisions are made every day about which stories to dedicate news resources to. I was, however, naïve, and wrong.



Monday, December 13, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt six)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

Epstein’s civil lawyers, Robert Deweese Critton Jr., Michael Tein, and James Pike, were ruthless, and the legal maneuvers had become incredibly ugly. Magistrate Judge Linnea R. Johnson presided over the case, and it astonished me how much room she gave those civil lawyers to torture Epstein’s victims.

The worst was that she allowed Epstein’s lawyers to depose one of the girls’ parents and question them about their religious beliefs on abortion. The victim, who had undergone several abortions, had never told her devout Catholic parents about the abortions, and the depositions of her and her parents are among the most painful I’ve ever read.



Sunday, December 12, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt five)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

Perhaps the most lucrative financial feat he designed was a five-hundred-million-dollar scheme in the 1990s, which, at the time (pre-Bernie Madoff), was considered the largest Ponzi scam in U.S. history. His then partner, Steven Hoffenberg, served eighteen years in federal prison for the crime and later claimed that Epstein was the mastermind behind the complicated financial alchemy they used to swindle investors.



Saturday, December 11, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt four)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

Finally, I heard from the FBI, denying my records request for the Epstein files. I wasn’t surprised. But I discovered that Dan Novack, a New York lawyer working on the celebrity gossip website Radar Online, had filed a court motion to force the FBI to release the files. As the months went by, and I lost track of his effort, he actually gained a victory of sorts when the FBI began turning over some of the records to him in large batches in the fall of 2017. I didn’t realize that my additional request triggered the FBI to place all the records online, in what it calls its “vault,” a portal of publicly released FBI case files. But for some reason, Radar Online wasn’t publishing anything about the records. The site is owned by American Media Inc. (AMI), publisher of the National Enquirer. Its CEO, David Pecker, was friends with Donald Trump, and a year earlier, in 2016, AMI had paid Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 for exclusive rights to her claim that she had an affair with Trump while he was married. Instead of publishing the story, however, AMI killed it to protect Trump, a pattern that came to be called “Catch and Kill.”

Novack couldn’t explain why Radar passed on publishing Epstein’s FBI records, but I was glad they did, and in the daily chaos of the Trump White House, no other media noticed.



Friday, December 10, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt three)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

Florida’s wackiness, however, does kind of grow on you, and as a journalist, especially, it’s a gold mine, providing a never-ending stream of stories that often garner worldwide attention, and sometimes ridicule. There’s always a Florida man or a Florida woman somewhere doing something that gives new meaning to stupidity.



Thursday, December 9, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt two)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

Ward managed to get the two sisters and their mother on the record and, along with other details about Epstein’s eccentric lifestyle, tried to draw a portrait of a successful man who had a sinister and potentially criminal side.

But when Epstein learned about Ward’s reporting, he denied the allegation and called her editor, Graydon Carter. Carter in turn scrubbed the piece of any hint of illicit activity with young women. Carter would later claim that the allegations weren’t corroborated and didn’t meet Vanity Fair’s journalistic standards.

But Ward alleges that Carter was threatened by Epstein, who had a history of killing stories in the media that were negative about him. Epstein had a mob-boss-like way of intimidating people who crossed him, and in Carter’s case, the warning came in the form of a bullet that was found outside his front door.



Wednesday, December 8, 2021

the last book I ever read (Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story, excerpt one)

from Perversion of Justice: The Jeffery Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown:

In 1974, Epstein was hired as a mathematics teacher at the Dalton School, one of the most prestigious prep schools in New York, catering to children of the wealthy. Though he had no college degree, he was nevertheless hired by headmaster Donald Barr, the father of William Barr, who would become U.S. attorney general under presidents George H. W. Bush and Donald Trump.

Headmaster Barr left under a cloud in early 1974, but by that time Epstein had already been given a teaching position.



Sunday, December 5, 2021

the last book I ever read (Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, excerpt fourteen)

from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather:

Father Latour’s recreation was his garden. He grew such fruit as was hardly to be found even in the old orchards of California: cherries and apricots, apples and quinces, and the peerless pears of France even the most delicate varieties. He urged the new priests to plant fruit trees wherever they went, and to encourage the Mexicans to add fruit to their starchy diet. Wherever there was a French priest, there should be a garden of fruit trees and vegetables and flowers. He often quoted to his students that passage from their fellow Auvergnat, Pascal: that Man was lost and saved in a garden.



Saturday, December 4, 2021

the last book I ever read (Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, excerpt thirteen)

from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather:

The Bishop rode home to his solitude. He was forty-seven years old, and he had been a missionary in the New World for twenty years – ten of them in New Mexico. If he were a parish priest at home, there would be nephews coming to him for help in their Latin or a bit of pocket-money; nieces to run into his garden and bring sewing and keep an eye on his housekeeping. All the way home he indulged in such reflections as any bachelor nearing fifty might have.

But when he entered his study, he seemed to come back to reality, to the sense of a Presence awaiting him. The curtain of the arched doorway had scarcely fallen behind him when that feeling of personal loneliness was gone, and a sense of loss was replaced by a sense of restoration. He sat down before his desk, deep in reflection. It was just this solitariness of love in which a priest’s life could be like his Master’s. It was not a solitude of atrophy, of negation, but of perpetual flowering. A life need not be cold, or devoid of grace in the worldly sense, if it were filled by Her who was all the graces; Virgin-daughter, Virgin-mother, girl of the people and Queen of Heaven: le rêve supreme de la chair. The nursery tale could not vie with Her in simplicity, the wisest theologians could not match Her in profundity.



Friday, December 3, 2021

the last book I ever read (Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, excerpt twelve)

from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather:

It was the Indian manner to vanish into the landscape, not stand out against it. The Hopi villages that were set upon rock mesas were made to look like the rock on which they sat, were imperceptible at a distance. The Navajo hogans, amond the sand and willows, were made of sand and willows. None of the pueblos would at that time admit glass windows into their dwelling. The reflection of the sun on the glazing was to them ugly and unnatural—even dangerous. Moreover, these Indians dislike novelty and change. They came and went by the old paths worn into the rock by the feet of their fathers, used the old natural stairway of stone to climb to their mesa towns, carried water from the old springs, even after white men had dug well.s

In the working of silver or drilling of turquoise the Indians had exhaustless patience; upon their blankets and belts and ceremonial robes they lavished their skill and pains. But their conception of decoration did not extend to the landscape. They seemed to have none of the European’s desire to “master” nature, to arrange and re-create. They spent their ingenuity in the other direction; in accommodating themselves to the scene in which they found themselves. This was not so much from indolence, the Bishop thought, as from an inherited caution and respect. It was as if the great country were asleep, and they wished to carry on their lives without awakening it; of as if the spirits of the earth and air and water were things not to antagonize and arouse. When they hunted, it was with the same discretion; an Indian hunt was never a slaughter. They ravaged neither the rivers nor the forest, and if they irrigated, they took as little water as would serve their needs. The land and all that it bore they treated with consideration; not attempting to improve it, they never desecrated it.



Thursday, December 2, 2021

the last book I ever read (Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, excerpt eleven)

from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather:

It was the month of Mary and the month of May. Father Vaillant was lying on an army cot, covered with blankets, under the grape arbour in the garden, watching the Bishop and his gardener at work in the vegetable plots. The apple trees were in blossom, the cherry blooms had gone by. The air and the earth interpenetrated in the warm gusts of spring; the soil was full of sunlight, and the sunlight full of red dust. The air one breathed was saturated with earthy smells, and the grass under foot had a reflection of a blue sky in it.



Wednesday, December 1, 2021

the last book I ever read (Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, excerpt ten)

from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather:

Antonio Olivares was the most intelligent and prosperous member of a large family of brothers and cousins, and he was for that time and place a man of wide experience, a man of the world. He had spent the greater part of his life in New Orleans and El Paso del Norte, but he returned to live in Santa Fé several years after Bishop Latour took up his duties there. He brought with him his American wife and a wagon train of furniture, and settled down to spend his declining years in the old ranch house just east of the town where he was born and had grown up. He was then a man of sixty. In early manhood he had lost his first wife; after he went to New Orleans he had married a second time, a Kentucky girl who had grown up among her relatives in Louisiana. She was pretty and accomplished, had been educated at a French convent, and had done much in Europeanize her husband. The refinement of his dress and manners, and his lavish style of living, provoked half-contempuous envy among his brothers and their friends.

Olivares’s wife, Doña Isabella, was a devout Catholic, and at their house the French priests were always welcome and were most cordially entertained. The Señora Olivares had made a pleasant place of the rambling adobe building, with its great court-yard and gateway, carved joists and beams, fine herring-bone ceilings and snug fire-places. She was a gracious hostess, and though no longer very young, she was still attractive to the eye; a slight woman, spirited, quick in movement, with a delicate blonde complexion which she had successfully guardered in trying climates, and fair hair—a little silvered, and perhaps worn in too many puffs and ringlets for the sharpening outline of her face. She spoke Franch well, Spanish lamely, played the harp, and sang agreeably.



Tuesday, November 30, 2021

the last book I ever read (Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, excerpt nine)

from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather:

When they sat down to supper, the host introduced to the Bishop the tall, stout young man with the protruding front, who had been asleep on the floor. He said again that Trinidad Lucero was studying with him, and was supposed to be his secretary,--adding that he spent most of his time hanging about the kitchen and hindering the girls at their work.

These remarks were made in the young man’s presence, but did not embarrass him at all. His whole attention was fixed upon the mutton stew, which he began to devour with undue haste as soon as his plate was put before him. The Bishop observed late that Trinidad was treated very much like a poor relation or a servant. He was sent on errands, was told without ceremony to fetch the Padre’s boots, to bring wood for the fire, to saddle his horse. Father Latour disliked his personality so much that he could scarcely look at him. His fat face was irritatingly stupid, and had the grey, oily look of soft cheeses. The corners of his mouth were deep folds in plumpness, like the creases in a baby’s legs, and the steel rim of his spectacles, where it crossed his nose, was embedded in soft flesh. He said not one word during supper, but ate as if he were afraid of never seeing food again. When his attention left his plate for a moment, it was fixed in the same greedy way upon the girl who served the table—and who seemed to regard him with careless contempt. The student gave the impression of being always stupefied by one form of sensual disturbance or another.



Monday, November 29, 2021

the last book I ever read (Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, excerpt eight)

from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather:

It was common talk that Padre Martínez had instigated the revolt of the Taos Indians five years ago, when Bent, the American Governor, and a dozen other white men were murdered and scalped. Seven of the Taos Indians had been tried before a military court and hanged for the murder, but no attempt had been made to call the plotting priest to account. Indeed, Padre Martínez had managed to profit considerably by the affair.

The Indians who were sentenced to death had sent for their Padre and begged him to get them out of the trouble he had got them into. Martínez had promised to save their lives if they would deed him their lands, near the pueblo. This they did, and after the conveyance was properly executed the Padre troubled himself no more about the matter, but went to pay a visit at his native town of Abíquiu. In his absence the seven Indians were hanged on the appointed day. Martínez now cultivated their fertile farms, which made him quite the richest man in the parish.



Sunday, November 28, 2021

the last book I ever read (Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, excerpt seven)

from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather:

While they were ascending the rock, deafening thunder broke over their heads, and the rain began to fall as if it were spilled from a cloud-burst. Drawing into a deep twist of the stairway, under an overhanging ledge, they watched the water shaken in heavy curtains in the air before them. In a moment the seam in which they stood was like the channel of a brook. Looking out over the great plain spotted with mesas and glittering with rain sheets, the Bishop saw the distant mountains bright with sunlight. Again he thought that the first Creation morning might have looked like this, when the dry land was first drawn up out of the deep, and all was confusion.

The storm was over in half an hour. By the time the Bishop and his guide reached the last turn in the trail, and rose through the crack, stepping out on the flat top of the rock, the noontide sun was blazing down upon Ácoma with almost insupportable brightness. The bare stone floor of the town and its deep-worn paths were washed white and clean, and those depressions in the surface which the Ácomas call their cisterns, were full of fresh rainwater. Already the women were bringing out their clothes, to begin washing. The drinking water was carried up the stairway in earthen jars on the heads of the women, from a secret spring below; but for all other purposes the people depended on the rainfall held in these cisterns.



Saturday, November 27, 2021

the last book I ever read (Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, excerpt six)

from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather:

They relapsed into the silence which was their usual form of intercourse. The Bishop sat drinking his coffee slowly out of the tin cup, keeping the pot near the embers. The sun had set now, the yellow rocks were turning grey, down in the pueblo the light of the cook fires made red patches of the glassless windows, and the smell of piñon smoke came softly through the still air. The whole western sky was the colour of golden ashes, with here and there a flush of red on the lip of a little cloud. High above the horizon the evening-star flickered like a lamp just list, and close beside it was another star of constant light, much smaller.



Friday, November 26, 2021

the last book I ever read (Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, excerpt five)

from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather:

The priest’s house was white within and without, like all the Isleta houses, and was almost as bare as an Indian dwelling. The old man was poor, and too soft-hearted to press the pueblo people for pesos. An Indian girl cooked his bean and cornmeal mush for him, he required little else. The girl was not very skillful, he said, but she was clean about her cooking. When the Bishop remarked that everything in this pueblo, even the streets, seemed clean, the Padre told him that near Isleta there was a hill of some white mineral, which the Indians ground up and used as whitewash. They had done this from time immemorial, and the village had always been noted for its whiteness. A little talk with Father Jesus revealed that he was simple almost to childishness, and very superstitious. But there was a quality of golden goodness about him. His right eye was overgrown by a cataract, and he kept his head tilted as if he were trying to see around it. All his movements were to the left, as if he were reaching or walking about some obstacle in his path.



Thursday, November 25, 2021

the last book I ever read (Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, excerpt four)

from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather:

In the golden October weather the Bishop, with his blankets and coffee-pot, attended by Jacinto, a young Indian from the Pecos pueblo, whom he employed as guide, set off to visit the Indian missions in the west. He spent a night and a day at Albuquerque, with the genial and popular Padre Gallego. After Santa Fé, Albuquerque was the most important parish in the diocese; the priest belong to an influential Mexican family, and he and the rancheros had run their church to suit themselves, making a very gay affair of it. Though Padre Gallegos was ten years older than the Bishop, he would still dance the fandango five nights running, as if he could never have enough of it. He had many friends in the American colony, with whom he played poker and went hunting, when he was not dancing with the Mexicans. His cellar was well stocked with wines from El Paso del Norte, whiskey from Taos, and grape brandy from Bernalillo. He was genuinely hospitable, and the gambler down on his luck, the soldier sobering up, were always welcome at his table. The Padre was adored by a rich Mexican widow, who was hostess at his supper parties, engaged his servants for him, made lace for the altar and napery for his table. Every Sunday her carriage, the only closed one in Albuquerque, waited in the plaza after Mass, and when the priest had put off his vestments, he came out and was driven away to the lady’s hacienda for dinner.

The Bishop and Father Vaillant had thoroughly examined the case of Father Gallegos, and meant to end this scandalous state of things well before Christmas. But on this visit Father Latour exhibited neither astonishment nor displeasure at anything, and Padre Gallegos was cordial and most ceremoniously polite. When the Bishop permitted himself to express some surprise that there was not a confirmation class awaiting him, the Padre explained smoothly that it was his custom to confirm infants at their baptism.



Wednesday, November 24, 2021

the last book I ever read (Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, excerpt three)

from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather:

On a long caravan trip across Texas this man had had some experience of thirst, as the party with which he travelled was several times put on a meagre water ration for days together. But he had not suffered then as he did now. Since morning he had had a feeling of illness; the taste of fever in his mouth, and alarming seizures of vertigo. As these conical hills pressed closer and closer upon him, he began to wonder whether his long wayfaring from the mountains of Auvergne were possibly to end here. He reminded himself of that cry, wrung from his Saviour on the Cross, ‘J’ai soif!’ Of all our Lord’s physical sufferings, only one, ‘I thirst,’ rose to His lips. Empowered by long training, the young priest blotted himself out of his own consciousness and meditated upon the anguish of his Lord. The Passion of Jesus became for him the only reality; the need of his own body was but a part of that conception.

His mare stumbled, breaking his mood of contemplation. He was sorrier for his beasts than for himself. He, supposed to be the intelligence of the party, had got the poor animals into this interminable desert of ovens. He was afraid he had been absent-minded, had been pondering his problem instead of heeding the way. His problem was how to recover a Bishopric. He was a Vicar Apostolic, lacking a Vicarate. He was thrust out; his flock would have none of him.



Tuesday, November 23, 2021

the last book I ever read (Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, excerpt two)

from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather:

When he opened his eyes again, his glance immediately fell upon one juniper which differed in shape from the others. It was not a thick-growing cone, but a naked, twisted trunk, perhaps ten feet high, and at the top it parted into two lateral, flat-lying branches, with a little crest of green in the centre, just above cleavage. Living vegetation could not present more faithfully the form of the Cross.

The traveller dismounted, drew from his pocket a much worn book, and baring his head, knelt at the foot of the cruciform tree.



Monday, November 22, 2021

the last book I ever read (Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, excerpt one)

from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather:

During the latter years of the reign of Gregory XVI, de Allande had been the most influential man at the Vatican; but since the death of Gregory, two years ago, he had retired to his country estate. He believed the reforms of the new Pontiff impractical and dangerous, and had withdrawn from politics, confining his activities to work for the Society for the Propagation of the Faith – that organization which had been fostered by Gregory. In his leisure the Cardinal played tennis. As a boy, in England, he had been passionately fond of this sport. Lawn tennis had not yet come into fashion; it was a formidable game of indoor tennis the Cardinal played. Amateurs of that violent sport came from Spain and France to try their skill against him.

The missionary, Bishop Ferrand, looked much older than any of them, old and rough – except for his clear, intensely blue eyes. His diocese lay within the icy arms of the Great Lakes, and on his long, lonely horseback rides among his missions the sharp winds had bitten him well. The missionary was here for a purpose, and he pressed his point. He ate more rapidly than the others and had plenty of time to plead his cause – finished each course with such dispatch that the Frenchman remarked he would have been an ideal dinner companion for Napoleon.



Friday, November 19, 2021

the last book I ever read (Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, excerpt sixteen)

from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever:

ALISON MOSSHART: I don’t know if all our detective work is going to figure out exactly what happened. I don’t know if we’re even allowed to know. Or if it’s even our business. I don’t know.



Thursday, November 18, 2021

the last book I ever read (Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, excerpt fifteen)

from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever:

MICHAEL STEED: I say this jokingly but, having to direct this Hong Kong episode, then me losing the gallbladder—I often blame my gallbladder as the sort of beginning of the end of Tony’s life, weirdly.

The second that I knew that [Asia] was slated to direct, I knew it was doomed; I knew someone was doomed. I had already planned on how I was going to keep Tony’s focus off of having [guest cinematographer] Christopher Doyle take over. I knew [cinematographer] Zach [Zamboni] was not going to be cool with it. But, man, once Asia took over, I was just like, Oh boy.



Wednesday, November 17, 2021

the last book I ever read (Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, excerpt fourteen)

from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever:

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: I did notice that when it came to promoting Sex and Love around the World in 2018, I noticed that he was tired, and he looked older, and that he was slightly different than I had seen him months earlier. I wonder whether he needed to step back and take some time for himself and to surround himself with the people who really loved him. I think his friends feel very sorry that he might have been sort of led astray in his personal life, toward the end. This is all speculation, but I know what I saw, and I saw a very tired man.



Tuesday, November 16, 2021

the last book I ever read (Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, excerpt thirteen)

from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever:

MORGAN FALLON: It was fucking insufferable. I would try to telegraph to him, over the course of these hundreds of conversations about jiu-jitsu, like, “Brother, I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about; I have no interest in what you’re talking about; I will never know anything about what you’re talking about; this is purely an endeavor of you telling me the same stories that you’ve told to everyone else.”

He was a lifelong addict, man. If it wasn’t heroin, it was work. If it wasn’t work, it was jiu-jitsu, it was relationships, or any number of other things. The way that Tony’s power went out to the world was largely through his various addictions, and I think he very clearly understood that he was never gonna be someone who was free from those addictions.

The jiu-jitsu was good, because largely it was a positive addiction, and so, as much as it was fucking insufferable to sit there and listen to him talk about something that I knew nothing about, over and over and over again, I wasn’t worried about him. I wasn’t worried that he was gonna collapse, or have a heart attack, or die of emphysema.



Monday, November 15, 2021

the last book I ever read (Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, excerpt twelve)

from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever:

DARREN ARONOFSKY: You saw this kind of weird colonialism that we were thrust in the middle of. I think Tony wanted to show that there’s many ways to show a sequence like that on a travel show, where you could edit that out, or you could really show what was going on. Because the poverty in Madagascar was hard to fathom. And there seemed to be a lot of prostitution going on, and a lot of underage prostitution.

So there were some really dark things. And you’re sitting there in your kind of incredible wealth, going, “What the hell’s going on here?”

Really hard to understand. And it was impossible for you to ignore. And then the environmental destruction that was going on was just everywhere. You’d be riding a train, and you’d see the forest being burned down in the distance, these huge plumes of smoke. When we flew on a small plane from the coast back to the capital, you could just see the country burning. So, it was pretty bleak.



Sunday, November 14, 2021

the last book I ever read (Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, excerpt eleven)

from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever:

NIGELLA LAWSON: I remember saying to him—because he would have the spaghetti Bolognese [at the hotel] most nights, or an In-N-Out Burger—“Tony, the food is so bad here.” And he said, “If the food were good, it would ruin it. People would come here for the food. That’s not why you come here.”

I put my breakfast tray outside, and it would [stay there] longer and longer. And once it was up to about four trays, and I complained to him. He said, “Nigella, you’re getting the Chateau all wrong. Obviously they can’t do room service cleanup, but if you kill someone by accident, they will remove the body, no questions asked.”



Saturday, November 13, 2021

the last book I ever read (Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, excerpt ten)

from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever:

JOSH FERRELL: I did the Ukraine episode of No Reservations. We went to Chernobyl. It was such a sad day, because it’s fucking Chernobyl. At the end of the day we’re like, “Well, that was terrible, let’s all burn our clothes, and everybody take the night off.” I called Tony and said, “Everybody’s doing their own thing,” and he said, “Let’s go to McDonald’s.” So me and Tony went to McDonald’s in Kiev, and had this little lonely meal, and talked about what a shitty day it had been. We both needed comfort food, and not to be alone, and to acknowledge that that was fucking heavy and terrible, over a Big Mac.



Friday, November 12, 2021

the last book I ever read (Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, excerpt nine)

from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever:

DIANE SCHUTZ: One thing Tony always valued was the camaraderie with the crew, but as time went on, our budgets increased, and you wanted to respect his time, so then he gets his own van to set, and the crew advances for an hour. Well, now he’s just lost an hour in the van with the crew, and he’s just there alone, with a local driver. That’s something I wonder: In later years, was it a factor in maybe not enjoying the shoots as much? On the one hand, we’re trying to make it easier for you, you don’t have to be on set for five hours, but at the same time something is lost, not being around people whom you know and like, and who know and like you.



Wednesday, November 10, 2021

the last book I ever read (Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, excerpt eight)

from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever:

ANDERSON COOPER: I think people who are drawn to a lot of the places that he went, and that I’ve gone, tend to be drawn, it comes—I think it comes from a similar place. I always felt that about Tony.

It’s hard for me to put this into words without sounding like an idiot or a jerk, but there are people who are attracted to the edges of the world. And at the edges of the world, a lot of stuff is stripped away, a lot of bullshit, a lot of falsehoods, a lot of the stuff that anybody deals with in his normal life. Things are more elemental, or feel more raw, or more alive in some ways. The desire to travel to those places, I totally understand the appeal. I also understand the pain associated with it, and that it comes from—Just as comedy often comes from a dark place, if you are entirely content, you don’t spend two hundred days a year traveling the world. There’s a certain restlessness I think that is inherent in that desire.



Tuesday, November 9, 2021

the last book I ever read (Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, excerpt seven)

from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever:

NATHAN THORNBURGH: There were a lot of different rooms in that man’s brain; you always knew it was a big mansion. Once in a while we’d have dinner and drinks. It was always a good time, and I loved being with him, but I tried to not get carried away.



Monday, November 8, 2021

the last book I ever read (Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, excerpt six)

from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever:

CHRISTOPHER BOURDAIN: Apart from filming a few episodes of TV with him, I took one other trip with Tony, on my own. We went out to Park City, Utah, for two or three days. That was actually a fun trip, because it was just me and Tony, and I think it was my idea. I said, “Hey, would you be willing to meet on a Thursday at LaGuardia and we just go to Park City?”

I always had a lot of fun on trips with Tony. I think it was José Andrés, at Tony’s memorial service, who said, “If you got to travel with Tony, you were then waiting, for the next three years, asking, ‘Is he gonna call me again? Am I gonna get to go travel with him?’” It was very true. I mean, I felt that way even before he was famous.

This is a very personal thing with me, and it impeded my relationship with Tony in many ways for years, but I never wanted to ask him questions in a way where I sounded like our mom. I never wanted to ask the question that was riddled with bad feeling, or, “I’m feeling slighted,” or, “I want more of your time.” I just never wanted to be that type of voice with him, bccause our mom was always grumbling about something that was making her unhappy, and I just didn’t want to be that way. Every conversations between them, there was always a loaded conversation of some kind.

I screwed myself, honestly, because probably if I had been a little more pushy, I would have seen Tony a lot more. And I wanted to, but I never wanted to be the resentful-toned person who was feeling slighted, or wanted something from him, because everybody wanted something from Tony, you know? Everybody wanted a piece of him. And I didn’t want to be one of those people who wanted a piece of him.



Sunday, November 7, 2021

the last book I ever read (Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, excerpt five)

from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever:

NANCY BOURDAIN: Everybody went to El Bulli, and I wasn’t allowed to go. And I said, “Tony, can’t you just pretend I’m somebody else, and I’ll take notes?” It was like, I couldn’t be the girl just taking notes at the restaurant; I couldn’t even go.

I said to Tony, “I want to be included.” Tony would do terrible things like make me sit on the damn floor, because he didn’t want a camera guy not to have a seat. I mean, I just felt like I was the lowest of the low, and after happens for a while, you don’t want to go.

When we were teenagers, we made fun of TV. Ted Baxter was on Mary Tyler Moore, and everything was goofy. It wasn’t something you aspired to, the little screen. But that changed over the years. Once it was offered to Tony, he grabbed it, and he was pretty selfish with it.

I think he was confused a lot. Looking back now, he handled it as well, I guess, as he could. No that’s not quite true, because, he [could] be very iron door, you know? Once Tony’s closed that iron door, it’s never coming up again.



Saturday, November 6, 2021

the last book I ever read (Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, excerpt four)

from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever:

JOEL ROSE: I was so adamantly against him taking that course with Gordon Lish. I thought he had nothing to teach him and could only hurt him in his writing. I thought Tony was a natural writer, a dedicated writer. He knew not where he was going—he couldn’t possibly—but he was willing to figure it out. He was already good, and I was afraid that someone as ego driven as Lish would confuse his own egocentric feelings and pollute Tony’s work.



Friday, November 5, 2021

the last book I ever read (Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, excerpt three)

from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever:

ROBERT VUOLO: We had a thing at Nikki & Kelly: someone got a bunch of those bandannas that the Japanese pilots wore during World War II, before they were about to kamikaze into the side of a warship, and that was so much part of that persona we were all sucked up into. Actually, you needed something around your forehead to keep from sweating all over your food, so it just added to the dramatics. And we were all into movies together. We had a tape of the soundtrack of Apocalypse Now going on in the kitchen for months.