What do You think about Everybody's Autobiography (2004)?
I took this book from our castle in Ireland after it became clear that I wasn't going to have enough books to read on the plane home (plus my five-hour layover in Newark). I will now send it back, because I don't want bad book karma. It was interesting to know how bewildering it was for her to achieve widespread success with The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. I enjoy the flow and rhythm of how she writes, and/but it takes some time to catch it. And some of what she says could be said no other way and still be that perfect. I still I wonder how she managed to have so much free time and how easily she had money, which seems to be a key component in her composure and general serenity (this is going from what I got out of the writing, not some general commentary on her life, about which I know almost nothing). She'll talk to anyone, ask them anything, and make people think about the way they talk and the way they think about things. There was a photo of a crowd at William & Mary (supposedly she was in the center of it), and her ideas about restoration--making old things new and new things old--belong somewhere in the rewrite of my dissertation, when it explodes to become something else. I have a couple of quotations to put here, but I'll have to find them first.
—Miriam
