Milking the Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Milking the Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet Book

When Katherine Clark began interviewing Eugene Walter (1921-98) in 1991 for an oral biography of this Mobile, Alabama, legend's picaresque life, friends asked her, "Do you think he will tell you the truth?" "I certainly hope not!" she replied. Clark, herself a Southerner, understood that the charm of Walter's conversation came from his brilliantly polished stories, in which "at a certain point the actual gives way to the apocryphal." So readers shouldn't ask if Tallulah Bankhead really gave Walter three pubic hairs or if Anna Magnani actually asked the mayor of Rome to help find Walter's lost cat: that's not the point. These anecdotes express Walter's appreciation of people he likes, and although the narrative is stuffed with famous names from Truman Capote to Leontyne Price, the exuberant protagonist finds less celebrated folks just as fascinating. His loving evocation of Mobile in the 1920s, when the front porch was the center of all social life, is just as detailed as his portraits of sojourns in more glamorous enclaves: Greenwich Village after World War II ("where I could sit in the evenings and hear Jane and Paul Bowles quarreling in their nearby apartment"); Paris in the early 1950s (his short story "Troubador" appeared in the first issue of Paris Review); and Rome during its La Dolce Vita years. Walter refused Fellini's plea that he perform with his marionettes in that particular movie, but he played an American journalist in 8 1/2 and "must have been in over a hundred of those crazy Italian films" before returning to Mobile in 1979. ("Sooner or later all Southerners come home, not to die, but to eat gumbo.") Clark, who captured an Alabama midwife's wisdom in Motherwit, gets out of her subject's way and lets his words create an enchanting world in this marvelously entertaining reminiscence. --Wendy Smith Read More

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  • Product Description

    â??Iâ??ve had a great life, and it all happened because I didnâ??t plan any of it.â?
    -- Eugene Walter

    Eugene Walter was the best-known man youâ??ve never heard of. In his 76 years, he ate of â??the ripened heart of life,â? to quote a letter from Isak Dinesen, one of his many illustrious friends. He savored the porch life of his native Mobile, Alabama, in the 1920s and â??30s. He stumbled into the Greenwich Village art scene in late-1940s New York. He was a ubiquitous presence in Parisâ??s expatriate café society in the 1950s, where he was part of the Paris Review at its inception. Perhaps most remarkably of all for a poor Southern boy, he spent the 1960s in Rome, where he participated in the golden age of Italian cinemaâ??including a role in Felliniâ??s 8 1?2â??and entertained some of the most famous people in the world.

    As recorded by Katherine Clark toward the end of Walterâ??s life, his storyâ??enlivened with personal glimpses of luminaries from William Faulkner and Martha Graham to Judy Garland and Leontyne Priceâ??is an eyewitness history of the heart of the last century and a pitch-perfect addition to the Southern literary tradition. Most of all, this sumptuous oral biography conveys the spirit and charm of a truly unique American who defied the odds and authority, embarked on life, and went wherever his fancy and whimsy led him.

    â??Whenever I found myself in the presence of Eugene Walter, I thought that everyoneâ??s life could be turned into a work of art. His was. Eugene Walter was a prince of whimsy and magic, and he turned his daily world upside down and made it elfin, cat-haunted, and hilarious. He could snap his fingers, and art would fall out all over the place. Milking the Moon has perfect pitch and flawlessly captures Eugeneâ??s pixilated wonderland of a life. I am so grateful to Katherine Clark for the job she has done, for bringing this incredible manâ??s story to the page with such wit, panache, and style. I love this bookâ??I couldnâ??t put it down!â?â??Pat Conroy

    â??Truman Capote lied to harm others; Eugene Walter, sometimes known as the other Capote, the good one, lied only to delight others.â?â??Gore Vidal

    â??Eugene Walter held the nearest thing to a salon; he was an unofficial reception committee and all roads led to him.â?â??Muriel Spark

    â??Eugene Walter is one of those personages who turn up in life and leave, well, an indelible impression in which all personal characteristicsâ??manner, speech, dress, and so onâ?? are memorably distinctive.â?â??George Plimpton, from the Foreword

  • 0609605941
  • 9780609605943
  • Eugene Walter
  • 1 August 2001
  • Crown Publishing Group (NY)
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 320
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