In This Fleet, Funny Novel, a Writer Makes Art and Sells Out in Hollywood
The heroine of Danzy Senna’s new book is a novelist envious of the material pleasures all around her in Hollywood.
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The time had come again. The little white bookshelf in the dining room, two shelves, three feet wide, was full. Overly full. The books were stacked in columns, bottom edges rather than spines showing, each shelf crammed tight. Elsewhere in our compact flat, a few other piles of books bubbled up like springs. These are the books my wife and I have accumulated in the last year or so, and we must find new homes for them. It’s not that we wouldn’t keep them if we could, but there is the undeniable matter of finite space. When Julie and I first moved into this two-bedroom flat twenty-six years ago, we knew immediately we would have to be judicious with the books we kept. Julie and I had both been in the book business for a long time before we married—she was a book publicist in Montreal, I had been a bookseller and publisher in the San Francisco Bay Area. Along with being veterate readers, practically voracious, constantly adding to our collections, we had also garnered hundreds of books simply by being in the business, comps and freebies and trades. We loved them all. Prior to moving in together, we “deaccessioned” duplicates, along with several other boxes of books we deemed unnecessary, selling them through yard sales, given to friends as gifts, etc. Then, in quick order, we had a child, and along with the books Julie and I bought each week for ourselves, we were flooded, most happily, with a torrent of children’s books—board books and picture books, chapter books for the future. The two six-foot shelves in Maddy’s room filled almost instantly. A house of books. But given the size of our flat, its too-narrow hallway and the five-foot wainscotting in the dining room, we would have to limit our books to what I call “the short shelf.” Julie has three six-foot shelves for her books, I’ve got the same, and Maddy’s room has two and a half such shelves. All in all this comes out to 125 feet of shelf space. While we continued to bring new […]
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The heroine of Danzy Senna’s new book is a novelist envious of the material pleasures all around her in Hollywood.
Kelly Blatz directing KJ Apa in ‘One Fast Move.’ Photo Credit: Frank Masi. Filmmaker Kelly Blatz chatted about writing and
