Since I've been writing the blog since 2009 that's how long it's been since I stopped adding to my commonplace book. In fact, when I started collecting the quotes, I knew nothing of anything called a commonplace book.
In keeping with my very intermittent correspondence with Russell Baker (who I will forever miss) I sent him my entries. I have a framed letter from him that goes back to 1967 when I wrote about his perhaps doing a column based on the ads at the time for the Avis and Hertz car rental companies, acknowledging Avis for "We Try Harder." He replied that he was trying to work it into a column of how the two car companies reminded him of the Republicans and Democrats (he didn't say which).
When I sent a sample of my quote entries he replied that what I was assembling was a Commonplace Book, and outside of Samuel Johnson's, they basically went nowhere in publishing circles.
I would have to strain going through several boxes to find the hard copy reply I received from Mr. Baker that gave me examples of his commonplace book entries. They were decidedly more scholarly than mine, although I cannot recall a single one now.
Since several of my entries were gleaned from obituaries, and I received advice from Marilyn Johnson, author of The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries, to start writing a blog, I've been doing that ever since, using obituaries as a launching pad for thoughts and digressions, and then just about anything else that flies into my cluttered mind.
I've never looked back, and continue to post blog entries. I've long since passed 1,000. I read a good deal, usually newspapers and magazines, so when I read in tomorrow's NYT Book Review the Essay section by Dwight Garner giving the genesis for his commonplace book, I was truly surprised to hear one got published.
Quite honestly, I shouldn't be surprised, since Mr. Garner is a long-time mucky-muck book critic for the NYT and assuredly might have publishers' and editors' phone numbers tapped into his iPhone. He's probably got several entries under "Q."
Sure enough, he's found someone to publish his book of ragtag quotes, available soon in hardcover for what now seems to be the going rate for hardcover tomes, $26.00. (Always more in Canada.)
In Mr. Garner's NYT Book Review essay about his own book (It's not really a review. That wouldn't be right.) he tells us he's structured it along categories: "food," "conversation," "social class," and more. I would have never thought of categories, but that's why Dwight got published and I write a blog.
Mr. Garner nods to Samuel Johnson, as of course did Mr. Baker. He doesn't however give us any examples of what he might have included other than tease us that he's got the word "fuck" in there somewhere. Perhaps several times.
The category idea is one I could see pursuing, but it wouldn't be by subject. It might be along the lines of obscure Grammy-like categories, or perhaps Best Four Word Utterance: Ring Lardner's "Shut up, he explained."
As already assembled, my commonplace book can contain passages from books I've read, like John Updike's collection of short stories, "Afterlife." There's a passage in there on page 115 about the "unseen giant" who subtracts the days from your life. It's a mountain of metaphor.
I'm fond of quoting Pete Hamill from his introduction to a collection of obituaries that "life is the leading cause of death." You can't get more profound than that.
Not all my entries are so focused on the passage of time, or death. I've got a 2002 quote in there that's now out-of-date from Mike LoPresti, a sports reporter for USA Today:
"There were but 11 Triple Crown winners in the last century, only three in the last 54 years. And with Seattle Slew’s passing the other day, all of them are dead. This we know because living Triple Crown champions are kept track of like ex-presidents and Titanic survivors."
A sports category would be good, but I'd sub-divide mine further into specific sports.
Mr. Garner's book is not yet available, so I can't go to the book store and browse through it yet. It has all the appearance of making a great stocking stuffer for the folks in your family that probably read his reviews and otherwise enjoy words in general. The crossword puzzle crowd.
Since Mr. Garner admits he's been collecting his entries for four decade, having started in high school, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say Mr. Garner is probably not a great deal younger than myself, at 71. But since he's got waaaaaaaaay more literary contacts than I'll ever have, I have no sudden illusions that I should ship my entries off to a publisher to sit on the slush pile.
No, I am however going to start a serialization of the entries I've compiled and perhaps start a weekly blog posting containing several, at least until I exhaust the supply on my thumb drive.
Perhaps Mr. Garner will then read my commonplace book. We might even have a few similar entries.
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