tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2444069458422024208.post8308975133301364929..comments2024-01-28T06:18:45.909-08:00Comments on The Curzon Group: A MUST READcurzon grouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00593876062208166082noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2444069458422024208.post-37036672658875367642009-11-13T15:35:37.114-08:002009-11-13T15:35:37.114-08:00I have bought a lot of books by authors that I did...I have bought a lot of books by authors that I didn't know because I was drawn to their covers. In the 70's, I bought Elmore Leonard's "Valdez is Coming." I hadn't read many westerns, but I was on the road and desperate and there weren't a lot of choices at the truck stop. I thought it was a beautifully written book and read everything else of his I could find. In the 80's, after our play closed in New York, & I was about to drive back to California, Bob Feldman, the sax player in the show, gave me a book called "Coming Through Slaughter" by Michael Ondaatje. -Take this with you- he said, -i think you'll like it-. He had seen it on a sidewalk bookstand and because the cover showed a picture of a man playing a cornet, he had bought it, read it and liked it. I remember being awake all night in a motel room somewhere because I couldn't stop reading it. The next year Ondaatji was giving a reading in New York. By then I had read "The Collected Works of Billy the Kid" and all of his poetry that I could find. Bob Feldman and Jim Nue, another playwight, and I, all went to St. Marks to hear him read from his book, "Running In the Family." We talked to him after the reading and Jim asked him how he came to write about outlaws & jazz musicians. He said that as a kid he had been fascinated by the American West and with New Orleans jazz. Jim and I were then rehearsing our western and Bob was a jazz musician so we all had a wonderful time talking together. If Bob hadn't bought that book, only because of the cover, I wouldn't have known Michael Ondaatji's work then, and I wouldn't have had the great pleasure of meeting him.Leonard Greycloudhttp://www.greycloud.comnoreply@blogger.com