A Conversation with Dominique Bohr - Editor, Book Dealer

"Nothing changed my life more than computers," says Dominique Bohr. "With a computer and the internet, you are plugged into the world's greatest library - that is the best thing."

When Dom's son was in second grade, he wrote report on his father. "My father," Benji wrote "is mainly interested in knowledge."

"That's right," says Dom. "Anything. It doesn't even have to have any relevance to my life.

"When I was young, I worked, following knowledge, for Elsevier Publishing Company. Elsevier put out a good Dutch language encyclopedia. It's widely read in The Netherlands. Sixty or seventy percent of Dutch households would have that encyclopedia on their bookshelves at home.

"I was one of about 10 editors revising the encyclopedia. Elsevier had very strict rules about the format for the articles and how to handle issues like country of origin. You know, in Europe people are always being born in countries that don't exist anymore.

"My responsibilities were to research and revise entries at the end of G and all of H. That included gravity. We had a renowned physicist writing an entirely new article on gravity but I knew a little physics myself. Not much, but I was young enough to be really arrogant. As editor, I was basically proof reading the physicist's article. Somewhere though - probably in my science fiction reading - I thought I'd heard about something called a graviton. I wrote to the renowned physicist. I said 'your article is pretty good but why didn't you mention anything about gravitons?' "

Dom laughed heartily. He couldn't get over the fact that a kid who reads science fiction was given the editorial authority to challenge a mature scholar who has devoted his life to physics. Did the physicist respond?

"Yes," exclaimed Dom. "He apologized! He added a bit about gravitons to the encyclopedia article!"

Dom did plenty of other interesting things following, accumulating, and organizing knowledge. Now he's a book dealer. He says he was headed for that pleasure from the earliest times.

"In The Netherlands family and friends often give money for birthdays and other occasions. When I was seven or eight years old, I measured that money in pocket book buying power. One pocket book cost 25 gulden. That was my measure.

"The quantity of money that could purchase of one book was my basic unit of currency."

Chris' Attitude About Book Ownership, in a nutshell

"If you've read every book you have, then you don't have enough books."

Baskets and Books

The woman who brought in these baskets had other things too. These baskets were woven in Ecuador near the border with Bolivia. Her brother spent years there as an anthropologist.

She first came into riverrun with the baskets. Chris liked them.

"What else do you have?" Chris asked her.

"Oh, I don't think anything else you'd want."

"Do you have an attic at home?"

"No. No attic. Although there is a barn. There's a loft in the barn. My great uncle brought big trunk from Finland in 1905. That trunk's in that loft"

A trunk in a loft in a barn sounded great to Chris. As it turned out the things from Finland were long gone but other treasures were tucked in the trunk. There were 20th century postcards and old toys and clothing from the 1930s. Mice had made nests of the clothes, but left the postcards and toys intact. Chris was delighted.

Ernest Hemingway

A story about Ernest Hemingway made a big impression on me. It may not be a true story, but maybe it doesn't matter whether or not it's true.

In the story, Hemingway is working as a journalist in Europe. He writes fiction on the side but it hasn't been published. E.H. brings a couple of promising stories to an agent or a publisher, in Paris I think. The agent or publisher LOVES the stories. He's crazy about them. He finds out Hemingway has more at home.

"More manuscripts? Like these? You're kidding!" say the agent or publisher.

"Boxes full," says Hemingway.

"By god, Man, can you get them to me right away? Jumping Jehosophat! I need to see everything you have. I'll publish it all! This stuff is dynamite!"

Hemingway was understandably eager to accommodate the guy. He called his wife, one of the early ones, and told her to pack up all of his writing. "Bring everything," he told her. "Put all my stories into a suitcase, that big one. Bring it to me here. Yes! Now. Get the train to Paris." He spoke too loudly because he was so nearly overcome. Then his voice dropped. "This is the Big Break," he told her.

Whichever wife it was, probably Elizabeth, obediently gathered up everything. Drafts. Masterpieces. Copies. Discards. She put every single thing Ernest had written into a satchel. She boarded the train with satchel in tow, got off the train in Paris and hurried to the office where the men were eagerly waiting.

No manuscripts. In all the excitement she'd forgotten the satchel on the train.

That satchel was never recovered. All was lost.

Later Hemingway divorced that woman. If the story is true, then no wonder.

The part that impresses me is this: Ernest Hemingway continued to write after the disaster. He didn't yield to discouragement. He kept on writing.

links to Ernest Hemingway material

Still Images of Ernest Hemingway

videos of E.H.

A Conversation with Amlin Gray, Playwright and Dramaturg

“A dramaturg oversees the literary integrity of the play,” Amlin Gray told me. “Dramaturgs do historical research to place the lines of the play in context. They do more than that. They make adaptations to the play. Often they are translators.

"As a dramaturg, I do a lot of translation and adaptation as well as historical and literary research.”
I’d never heard of a dramaturg. Amlin Gray opened a window to behind the scenes at the theater. I wondered if the research was mostly to help costume designers.
“No,” he said. “ Or partly. Costume and scene designers are usually very good researchers on their own. Primarily though, a dramaturg assists the actors and the director with background material, context, and literary flow”.

As a dramaturg, it helps to have experience as a playwright. Amlin Gray is a playwright. He downplayed it in our conversation, not even mentioning that he’d won the prestigious Obie Award for exceptional achievement. He won that award for his play, How I Got That Story, about a war correspondent in Vietnam.
Gray did talk some about his plays when we chatted about Joyce Carol Oates.

“She’s amazing,” said Gray. “She still teaches and she writes about a book a week!

"I worked on a play with her once,” said Gray. “Not exactly with her. Nagle Jackson was the artistic director at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton. He adapted the Tragical History of Dr. Faustus for production as Faustus in Hell. Of course, that’s a tale that has been told and retold. Christopher Marlowe in the 16th century. Goethe in the 18th century. As opera, as symphony, as novel, poetry, plays.
“For Faust in Hell, Nagle Jackson commissioned 7 playwrights, each to write a short piece for one of the 7 sins. I wrote for Greed. Oates wrote for Lust.”
The other sins? The other playwrights?
“Edward Albee was Envy. His piece was great. Jean-Claude Vanitallie wrote Pride. Rommulus Linney – Rage. Christopher Durang – Sloth. John Guare – Gluttony. It was a great line-up of playwrights.”
Gray told me which piece he liked best of the seven. “It was brilliant, really brilliant,” he said, but I’ve irresponsibly forgotten which sin, which playwright. I do remember his admiration for everyone though, and his pleasure at meeting with them. “We were all brought together at the last to fine-tune before the production.”

From what languages does Gray translate?

“Spanish, German, French.”
Did he say Greek also, or did I just read that somewhere? I asked him later. “I don’t think I said Greek because I don’t have the same command of Greek I have of the other languages. One time though, I was asked to translate and adapt Sophocles. I used a dictionary and a grammar, but I was surprised at how much Greek I remembered from college.”

Amlin Gray talked enthusiastically about a few of his projects - being playwright in residence at Milwaukie Repertory Theater and his adaptation there of Don Quixote for young people, his interest in covert plots within the ostensible plot, teaching at Sarah Lawrence, his specialty in Shakespeare. He told how Shakespeare’s fairies, “in A Midsummer’s Night Dream, for instance, are a little more sinister, have a little more edge to them then generally recognized today.”
Although Amlin Gray specializes in Shakespeare, his interests are broad ranging.
“I adore Japanese theater. Kabuki is just so extravagant and then on the other hand, Noh plays are so austere.”

Gray enjoys much. He reads widely and deeply. His enthusiasms are contagious. Now I want to see all his plays. We talked in riverrun, so of course we talked about books too.

“I buy too many books,” said Gray.

How well I know (and admire) this characteristic! riverrun salutes all of us who buy too many books, and offers a special salute to Amlin Gray.

synopses, production history, and purchase information for these Amlin Gray plays:
Founding Fathers, How I Got That Story, Kingdom Come, Monkey's Teeth, Pirates, Villanous Company, Bindle Stiff, The Dream Chain, The Fantod, Outlanders, Wormwood

Sarah Lawrence faculty bio (alphabetical, skip down to Gray)

commentary on the 2004 revival of How I Got That Story

Summer in riverrun

Irene Zenolli and Forrest Orick

New Windows

New windows and door were put into old riverrun this summer. They had to be. The insurance company wouldn't renew the contract for our landlady without the modern replacements even though the old ones served well.

Fond sentiments are so intense about riverrun that some felt badly to see the old paint-peeled doors and windows go. "But where is the old door now?" asked Michael. "Is it something I could have?"