Getting My Fix and Being Called Out for It

My recent fortnight at the beach had killed my bedside book stack, a state that brings on the shakes in an avid reader. Serendipitously, I was at the main library yesterday and noticed the used book sale. The sign said it all: Fill a Bag for $1.00, so even if I could only find a couple of books of interest, it was going to be easy on the pocketbook and at least lessen the tremors.

With no great expectation of finding much, I began going through the shelves, bypassing the fiction for the kind of offbeat stuff I like to read. Bingo! Timebends: A Life by playwright and bombshell hubby Arthur Miller promises to be full of the kind of twentieth century social history that I so enjoy reading.

Who Walk Alone first caught my eye because it was an older hardback book, so worn that I could barely read the embossed lettering of the title. Opening it, I found an explanation of what the book was about, namely the story of an American soldier who returned from the Spanish-American War in the Philippines and years later became a leper living in a leper colony. What do I know about lepers? Okay, my interest was piqued.

And then there were the women. My most recent choice (1987) was folk singer Judy Collins' autobiography, full of old black and white photographs of her friends, lovers and fellow musicians.

Slightly older (1979), but in the same pop culture vein, was Notes by Eleanor Coppola; the dutiful wife accompanied her director husband to the Philippines for the filming of "Apocalypse Now." She was supervising a documentary about the making of the film and this book is her notes taken during the process. Sounded good to me.

More fascinating women followed, including Conversations with Katherine Anne Porter, A Bess Streeter Aldrich Treasury, and Reprieve: A Memoir by dancer and choreographer Agnes DeMille; all looked promising.

There were a couple of other selections, but I won't bore anyone further with titles. And I feel safe in assuming that I would indeed bore any other human being because of the conversation I had with the library lady when I took my books to the counter to pay up.

"Thank you so much!" I enthused. "I can't believe I got all these books for $1.00!"

"No, thank YOU," she replied pointedly. "Nobody else would have taken those books off our hands. We ought to be paying you the dollar."

Wow. Literary nerdiness confirmed by a perfect stranger.

Time to take my bag of books and leave quietly.

How to Watch a Silent Movie

I juts started getting into silent films in the last couple of years.

And even then mainly because of my friend Jameson and his monthly Silent Music Revival, a showing of a silent film with a band providing live music accompaniment.

 He's suggested several films for me to check out since then and now I'm quick to take advantage of an opportunity to see a silent film.

The Richmond Moving Image Co-Op (the people who do the Italian Film Fest, the James River Film Fest, Flicker and more) started a 4-part Silent Classics series last week and today I went to see Buster Keaton in "College" at the downtown library's auditorium.

Keaton was just as stone-faced as I'd been told he always was and the film showed off his surprising athletic prowess as he tried to win the most popular girl on campus.

The film was released in 1927, so there were references to colored waiters and girls being expelled for having a boy in their room.

Very quaint.

VCU's film guru Mike Jones spoke before the film and told the audience that we'd be seeing the film on 16mm, a rare treat these days and only because Randolph-Macon College divested itself of all its old 16mm films about seven years ago and VCU was the lucky recipient.

As Jones pointed out, there's a certain retro pleasure to watching a film accompanied by the whirring of the projector.

To a fan of silent movies, it's as enjoyable a part of revisiting the past as the movie itself.