(Inspired by the writing of Amy Ozols)
Welcome to our room. It’s not much and we really didn’t expect to be here this long (going on seven months now) but it’s home and it sure as hell beats the alternative, as I’m fond of reminding myself and others with abundant frequency. The room is comfortable in its own sort of quaint way and it’s a bit larger than some of the studio apartments I have rented down in L.A. over the years.
So let me give you the grand tour. We use the top of the AC unit under the window over there to the right of the front door as a shelf of sorts; one of my AVN trophies for writing is there, a stack of DVDs of documentaries I wrote and produced back in the day, a couple of votive candle holders, and two three-volume sets of Empires of the Ancient Near East and Empires of Early Latin America from the Folio Library. Aren’t those slipcases beautiful?
Over there to the right is the island that divides the living quarters and kitchenette from the bedroom; that’s where the TV is, you see, and then a row of books to the left of the TV. Lela observed a few days ago that there is a discernible hierarchy to the conscious design in which the books are segregated throughout the room, and she is correct in her assessment.
The books near the TV, for instance, are important but sort of secondary in significance, everything from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, a Fitzgerald bio (the first ever written, in fact) and a tepid Mickey Mantle bio, Henry Miller, E.L. Doctorow, Updike, Kevin Starr’s Golden Gate, Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel (a commemorative paperback edition), and a new translation of Collodi’s Pinocchio with an introduction by Umberto Eco.
In front of the books on the island are my other two AVN awards (which look remarkably like bowling trophies) and that small wicker basket there is where we store all of our votive candle holders (Let me give you a tip — if you ever buy votive candles at Wal Mart, be careful. They heat to an insane temperature as they melt down and will cause glass holders to explode … literally.)
In front of the island is my electric wheelchair (purchased for me by Medicare two years ago); that towel-draped stand that the lamp and the air purifier are resting on is actually two cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other, one of the boxes containing our supply of new light bulbs and batteries.
Down there on the floor to the left are cardboard magazine cases for storing my copies of The New Yorker (I have a gift subscription, it’s not like I can afford the The New Yorker every week) and then more books inside that Samuel Adams beer box on the floor: Bolano, Sandburg on Lincoln, To Kill a Mockingbird, my Rudy Wurlitzer collection (a very good friend and supportive colleague), and a John Adams bio that I haven’t read yet — yes, a John Adams bio in a hollowed-out 12-pack box of Samuel Adams beer serving as a book case. We appreciate irony here in our humble little suite.
Now if you turn to the left, there’s our sofa, which functions more as a torture device or some stone slab out of The Flintstones than a comfortable piece of furniture. The damn thing is murder on my arthritis.
On the coffee table in front of the sofa are my “important” books, titles I am currently reading or need easy access to for research: two Library of America anthologies on baseball and Los Angeles; Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon and Tender is the Night; two Simenon Inspector Maigret titles that I have not finished; Aesop’s Fables (a hardback facsimile of the 1912 edition); an excellent graphic novel of Jane Eyre; the Cliffs Notes for Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (a work I’m constantly studying with no clear objective, the Cliffs Notes were picked up for one dollar at a local Borders Books Going Out of Business Sale two weeks ago); American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by the great historian, Joseph J. Ellis, and an earlier Ellis work, After the Revolution (1979), on arts and culture in post-revolutionary America; and, finally, a review copy of The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story.
Over time, most of the books on the coffee table will be cycled into another part of the room, perhaps the regimented line of books next to the TV, or the Sam Adams box on the floor, or to the bedroom collection (as we shall see shortly), as new titles are commissioned to the “important” line-up on the coffee table, within arm’s reach. I should mention that there’s also a pencil/pen holder stuffed full of an assortment of ink writing instruments on the coffee table, two ceramic ashtrays with garish Las Vegas artwork, a glass candy dish, votive candle holders, a small wicker basket containing three bottles of prescription meds that are taken frequently throughout the day and night and a small bottle of nasal spray, and an 18-ounce bottle of St. Ives Intense Healing Skin Moisturizer.
Moving on to the kitchen …
(Photographs copyright Penelope Fortier)
