The Fruitcake Lady (Truman Capote's Aunt)

Speaking of Truman Capote, here's a clip of one of his aunts, Edna Marie Rudisill, who is said to have had a hand in raising him. Ms. Rudisill apparently became somewhat of a celebrity on the Jay Leno Show and this is said to be typical of what she did on the show. The woman had no fear and pulled no punches. She's funny, if "R Rated."



I've been told that the lady passed away a year or so ago at about 95 years of age. I tried searching for more details via Google but came up empty. She was definitely a hoot and if she was anything like this when Truman was a boy he may have gotten some of his sense of humor and his sharp tongue from her.

Truman Capote - Hollywood Versions

I really miss Truman Capote from the days when he was constantly showing up on television talk shows and variety shows. I enjoyed his "outrageous" mannerisms, his voice and the way that he always tried to shock the host and audience of the shows on which he guested. He always made me laugh and that is exactly what he wanted to do. But Capote managed to hide behind the "character" that he turned himself into and it allowed him to remain a celebrity despite the great writing difficulties that he had after he finished "In Cold Blood." He was unique and he still fascinates me but, for some reason, I've seen neither of the two movies about him that were produced a few years ago. I need to fix that.


"Infamous" movie trailer - Warner Brothers


"Capote" movie trailer - Sony

I've often wondered how two major studios could decide to produce almost the same movie at the same time, but I'm sure that Truman would have loved all the attention. I'm curious to see how Harper Lee is portrayed in the two films and to find out whether or not she had anything to do with either of them. So I'm finally getting around to these two movies (that's my usual pace these days when it comes to movies) and looking forward to what they have to say about Capote and Nell Harper.

One Reader's New Year's Resolutions

I'm not one for making New Year's resolutions mainly because I can't remember ever making one that I followed through with for more than a few days anyway. So why bother? But this list of one "reader's New Year's resolutions" by the American-Statesman's book editor, Jeff Salamon, made me chuckle a bit because of the universality of the man's resolutions. I think that those of us who think of ourselves as readers can easily pick out three or four of Salamon's resolutions for ourselves. I'm willing to bet they are pretty much the concerns of every dedicated reader out there to one degree or another.

1. Read faster...I'm not interested in speed-reading methods that encourage skipping every other word or sentence or paragraph; skimming is to reading as stepping in a puddle is to swimming. I want to read the way I already read, just more quickly.

2. Less genre fiction, more short lit...Like everyone I know, I'm usually worn down enough by my professional, familial and social responsibilities that what little discretionary reading time I have I often give over to something relatively undemanding; mostly, high-grade specimens of genre fiction. But then, occasionally, I'll pick up a short work of "serious" literature — recently, Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice" — and gape at how different it feels to give myself over to an author who's more interested in language and character than plot.

3. Don't read in bed... Reading until I fall asleep has only succeeded in training me to fall asleep when I read.

4. Buy fewer books... I'm surely not the only bibliomaniac who spends as much time shopping for books as he does lamenting how many of the books he already owns go unread. Partly, this is because I adore books as objects; a vintage paperback designed by Paul Rand is a thing of value, whatever resides between its covers. And partly it's because my eyes are too big for my eyes, as it were; I'm eternally fooling myself into believing that tomorrow morning I'll wake up and discover a few extra hours in the day that I can devote to reading.

5. Try to remember... You'd think that, being a slow reader, I would retain most of what I read; each word has that much more time to embed itself in my consciousness. But you'd be wrong.

I love the last sentence of Salamon's article because it so perfectly describes what I meant when I named this blog "Book Chase."

The aura of a book I have yet to read, with its promise of rapture, surprise and edification, might be even more powerful than the aura of a book I have read, enjoyed and duly forgotten.

Jeff Salamon is definitely a kindred soul of ours.

Tainted Hero

What happens when a good man, a veteran of numerous Special Forces combat missions and a man still capable of the kind of physical violence that kept him alive during his days in the military, gives up on the formalities of society to keep his family safe? Is he still a hero if he takes the law into his own hands and eliminates those who threaten or harm his family because a legal system riddled with weak judges will no longer do the job for him?

That is the question explored by author Michael Davis in his new book, Tainted Hero, but ultimately it is a question each reader will have to answer for himself. Imagine what the world looks like through the eyes of Eric Emerson, a moral man who feels compelled to protect those who cannot protect themselves. He has tried to play by society’s rules and, as a result, has forever lost some of the people closest to him. Now he has had enough. He still has the skills and, just as importantly, some of the special equipment that enabled him to survive missions behind enemy lines and he decides to use them. Whether they call it revenge or they call it vigilante justice, can anyone blame him for punishing those who have caused him so much personal grief when the legal system refuses to do it?

By the time that Eric and Major Samantha Cassidy, stumble onto the existence of a secret government report predicting imminent world catastrophe, the pair have already butted heads with government officials, high-ranking military officers and defense contractors about a new defensive missile being tested for use by the American military. As they get closer and closer to the truth, and as they start to suffer the consequences, they realize that they are dealing with something much larger than they ever dreamed.

Eric is faced with the biggest moral issue of his lifetime when he has to decide what to do with the terrible information about his government’s intentions that he possesses. Should he expose the study or does justice require him to allow the plan to proceed, regardless of its cost?

Tainted Hero is an interesting thriller to be sure, and it leaves the reader with a difficult question to answer: Is a “tainted hero” still a hero or is that simply impossible to imagine? Judge for yourself.

Rated at: 3.5

Faked Out Again

Is there anything more irritating in the entertainment world than an athlete or performer who milks his retirement for every bit of publicity and adulation he can possibly squeeze from it and then refuses to actually retire?

Think Roger Clemens, he who announced his retirement prior to his "last" World Series and who was the toast of the sports world in his final days in a New York Yankee uniform. Everyone loved Roger (well, maybe not the folks in Boston) because of the way that he chose to retire on top after helping his team to get into another World Series, exactly what every major league ballplayer dreams of doing.One problem: Roger traded Yankee pinstripes for Houston Astros pinstripes just a few months later, pitched three years in Houston and then another half-season in New York. Who knows what happens next for Clemens unless the steroid scandal finally forces him into "real" retirement for good?

Think Garth Brooks, the guy who somehow hyped himself into country music stardom despite abandoning real country music to become Billy Joel in a cowboy hat (except that Billy never swung from ropes or smashed his piano on stage). Ol' Garth retired and then repackaged his same, sad selection of songs so many ways that only Wal-Mart could keep up with his "retirement." Then, of course, Garth and Trisha Yearwood made it official and got married just in time for him to sing on stage with her and record with her during his retirement. But, by then, all those Garth Brooks fanatics had already spent their money on all the repackaged goop they could get their hands on because Garth let them believe that was all there would be for at least the next dozen years. And the new songs keep trickling out. Funny guy, that Garth.

Now J.K. Rowling, she who practically shut down the world one night last July in celebration of what was said to be the last Harry Potter book EVER, a woman who makes the marketing machine behind Garth Brooks look amateurish, is hinting that she might yet write an eighth Harry Potter book...or a ninth or tenth, for all she knows. Seven, you say? We were promised seven and out and we all thought that we had now read the whole Potter saga so we laughed and cried together in sad celebration of the best and most important seven books ever written in the history of the world? No, says Ms. Rowling. Never say never.

These people have no shame. Their accountants and bankers love them, but I've had enough of faux retirements to last me a lifetime. Now, even Harry won't go away quietly.

The Story of Forgetting

Thanks to breakthroughs in medical technology, it is not unreasonable for people to expect to live well into their eighties or even past ninety years of age today. But, precisely because medical science can keep our bodies alive longer than ever before, more and more families are forced to deal with the impact of Alzheimer’s disease. And despite the disease’s near epidemic numbers since the seventies there is still no cure for it as it continues to devastate families in ever increasing numbers.

There is no doubt that Alzheimer’s impacts some families more than others, a fact of which Stefan Merril Block is well aware since learning that nearly every member of his mother’s family has suffered from the disease. The Story of Forgetting, Block’s debut novel, tells the story of the Haggard family, a family like his own that has endured the horrors of Alzheimer’s disease generation after generation.

Block tells his story through the eyes of two very different people who have more in common than either could ever imagine. Seth Waller, an introverted Austin high school student, is enduring the loss of his mother who has been diagnosed as a sufferer of a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s and has been placed into a nursing facility that can provide her the constant attention that she needs. Abel Haggard, who lives alone on a decaying farm north of Dallas, has lost his twin brother to the disease and wants nothing more from life than to be left alone while he waits hopefully for the return of the daughter he has not seen in decades.

Seth knows nothing about his grandparents because his mother and father have never spoken of the time before they found each other. But a combination of his sudden realization of the importance of his mother’s genetic history and his own internet hacking skills starts the fifteen-year-old on his own “empirical investigation” to learn about his mother’s family, an investigation that brings him closer and closer to the ultimate truth.

The Story of Forgetting is a touching and informative portrayal of the destructive power of Alzheimer’s disease. Stefan Block describes Alzheimer’s patients with remarkable sympathy and clarity and offers insights into the disease from the points-of-view of both the patients themselves and of the family members who must deal with the impact of the disease on their loved ones. He very effectively ties the separate stories of Seth and Abel together with interspersed episodes from the fantastical tale that has been passed from generation-to-generation by the Haggard family, the story of Isidora , a land “free from the sorrows of memory,” helping to make this a powerful debut novel.

Rated at: 3.5