Homes and Haunts of Edward Fitzgerald (Classic Reprint)

Homes and Haunts of Edward Fitzgerald (Classic Reprint)

Author: Mary Eleanor Fitzgerald Kerrich

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2018-02-02

Total Pages: 22

ISBN-13: 9780267595853

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Excerpt from Homes and Haunts of Edward Fitzgerald Originally a farmhouse, Fitz Gerald restored and added to it without destroying its char acter. Its fine barn was left standing, and on its eaves pigeons purple-breasted car riers, egotistical fantails, and meek brown nuns - cooed out their interminable afiaz'res de caeur. Here in the shadow of green trees still slept its duck pond, provoking the remark, which amused F itzgerald so much, of his old man-servant, delivered after deliberation, Well, them ducks du seem fond of the water, to be sure. Fitzgerald's home bore the clear impress of his individual ity, of his love for Nature, of his clinging to associations for the sake of the past and for their own sake. Just as the barn was allowed to stand, kept in perfect order, so was left undisturbed the farm-kit chen, with its separate en trance, on a line with the porch of the front door, a kitchen wherein all things were kept by his little, active, elderly housekeeper, to a pitch of cleanliness and order that might be called painful. There lived cherished possession now, alas! Seldom to be found the little couple who, joint tenants of a china house, with a startlingly vermilion roof and spotless walls, so regulated their walks abroad that, with tender gallantry, the gentle man only braved the inclement weather, leaving to his lady, a matron of the sparest pro portions, the delights of a promenade on a fine day. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.


Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California

Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California

Author: Matthew Specktor

Publisher: Tin House Books

Published: 2021-07-27

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1951142632

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A Best Book of the Year at The Atlantic Los Angeles Times Bestseller "[An] absorbing and revealing book. . . . nestling in the fruitful terrain between memoir and criticism." —Geoff Dyer, author of Out of Sheer Rage Blending memoir and cultural criticism, Matthew Specktor explores family legacy, the lives of artists, and a city that embodies both dreams and disillusionment. In 2006, Matthew Specktor moved into a crumbling Los Angeles apartment opposite the one in which F. Scott Fitzgerald spent the last moments of his life. Fitz had been Specktor’s first literary idol, someone whose own passage through Hollywood had, allegedly, broken him. Freshly divorced, professionally flailing, and reeling from his mother’s cancer diagnosis, Specktor was feeling unmoored. But rather than giving in or “cracking up,” he embarked on an obsessive journey to make sense of the mythologies of “success” and “failure” that haunt the artist’s life and the American imagination. Part memoir, part cultural history, part portrait of place, Always Crashing in the Same Car explores Hollywood through a certain kind of collapse. It’s a vibrant and intimate inspection of failure told through the lives of iconic, if under-sung, artists—Carole Eastman, Eleanor Perry, Warren Zevon, Tuesday Weld, and Hal Ashby, among others—and the author’s own family history. Through this constellation of Hollywood figures, he unearths a fascinating alternate history of the city that raised him and explores the ways in which curtailed ambition, insufficiency, and loss shape all our lives. At once deeply personal and broadly erudite, it is a story of an art form (the movies), a city (Los Angeles), and one person’s attempt to create meaning out of both. Above all, Specktor creates a moving search for optimism alongside the inevitability of failure and reveals the still-resonant power of art to help us navigate the beautiful ruins that await us all.