11/2/2007 - Friday evening

Reading Granta, Anthony Cavendish Inside Intelligence. He's reading bits here and there, about the Cold War.

Granta is a quarterly magazine published in England. It's also, he pointed out, a river. It runs along Cambridge, where Granta was born. But, though he spoke with a charming British accent, it was not purchased on the other side of the Atlantic (or Pacific plus Siberia plus Europe as I like to think of it). No, he bought it right here on our shores, absent a cover, for a dollar at the Main Library.

A few months ago I went to the Commonwealth club here in San Francisco to hear readers from Granta's Best of Young American Novelists 2, among which was, as I was pleasantly surprised, a writer who heralded from my own hometown, Helena, Montana--Maile Meloy.

His favorite book, which he called out to me as he boarded his bus--À la recherche du temps perdu--which had the ring of, rhyming with perdu, Adieu! ....by Marcel Proust. (The English translation--Remembrance of Things Past.) Check out this link for other people on my blog who like Proust.