The Banana Sculptor, the Purple Lady, and the All-Night Swimmer

Informationen zum Autor Susan Sheehan and Howard Means Klappentext We Americans love to look at ourselves. How we vote, where we work, what we think about church and school -- studying ourselves is a national pastime. What has been missing in all this self-examination, until now, is a book about the greatest national obsessions of all: the hobbies we pursue, the collections and amateur sports to which we devote so much of our lives.The Banana Sculptor, the Purple Lady, and the All-Night Swimmer chronicles the amazing variety of ways in which we relax, compete with others and ourselves, and indulge some of our richest fantasies. Here are wonderfully warm and witty accounts of Americans as they: attempt to swim all the Great Lakes, often in horrible conditions; quit a job and begin raising sheep to accommodate a newfound passion for spinning; eat at every McDonald's in the nation; carve The Last Supper from wood; cross all the world's suspension bridges; build huge banana sculptures; roller blade, scull, and bake; and collect marbles, Noah's arks, talking birds, and much more.In these pages you'll meet a marvelous array of ordinary people who do unusual things, sometimes to extremes, as they define for themselves worlds of imagination, contest, and excellence. These are people who thrill to the chase and sometimes plain wear themselves out having fun, whether it's flying kites as big as a king-size mattress, canoeing in the Canadian wilderness, or meticulously recording the daily details of their everyday existence.In Working, Studs Terkel gave us an unforgettable oral history of the working life of an earlier generation. The Banana Sculptor, the Purple Lady, and the All-Night Swimmer is a history for our own times -- of the passionate pursuits by which so many of us define ourselves and of the universal search for happiness and a sense of fulfillment.Maybe you'll find yourself in the forty people profiled here. Maybe you'll find a hobby that you'll want to make your own. Either way, your life is likely to be enriched, just as the lives of the people you will read about are enriched by the depth of their commitment and the beauty of their accomplishments. Chapter One: Doug Fishbone: Lots of Bananas As a youngster in Queens, New York, Doug Fishbone assumed he would grow up to be a doctor "because that was in the rhythm of the household and my father was a surgeon." One night, back when M*A*S*H was a hit television show, he was awakened by a bad dream: "I was performing surgery and I killed the patient." After he graduated from Amherst, where he was a music major, his substitute-career thought was to be "a wheeler-dealer business type." He spent some time in Israel selling a stretch fabric made of acetate and spandex, called Slinky. "I'm an easy-going guy, not a real grab-'em-by-the-lapel salesman, so I operated at a net loss," Fishbone, age thirty-two, says. Fishbone returned to New York, got a job "in the financial field," and took some art classes. First he worked with clay, then with bronze. "I loved art and I hated my job, so I quit the financial gig and decided to devote myself to becoming an artist." As part of his preparation, he took a job at a bronze foundry in Long Island City. "Most of the guys I worked with were Ecuadorians. I used to go to salsa clubs with them to drink and dance. After ten months of learning how to weld and chase metal, I figured I wasn't going to learn much more. It was time to move on." He was taken with the idea of going to Ecuador, heard about an art residency program in Cuenca, a city considered one of the nicest in the country, submitted a pack of photographs of his clay and bronze sculptures, and was invited to come. He arrived in March 1998. "You can live like a prince in Cuenca for fifty dollars a month. I was able to work almost full-time on my art instead of wearing a tie and scrounging to make a buck." Fishbone we...

Autorentext

Susan Sheehan and Howard Means

Klappentext

We Americans love to look at ourselves. How we vote, where we work, what we think about church and school -- studying ourselves is a national pastime. What has been missing in all this self-examination, until now, is a book about the greatest national obsessions of all: the hobbies we pursue, the collections and amateur sports to which we devote so much of our lives. The Banana Sculptor, the Purple Lady, and the All-Night Swimmer chronicles the amazing variety of ways in which we relax, compete with others and ourselves, and indulge some of our richest fantasies. Here are wonderfully warm and witty accounts of Americans as they: attempt to swim all the Great Lakes, often in horrible conditions; quit a job and begin raising sheep to accommodate a newfound passion for spinning; eat at every McDonald's in the nation; carve The Last Supper from wood; cross all the world's suspension bridges; build huge banana sculptures; roller blade, scull, and bake; and collect marbles, Noah's arks, talking birds, and much more. In these pages you'll meet a marvelous array of ordinary people who do unusual things, sometimes to extremes, as they define for themselves worlds of imagination, contest, and excellence. These are people who thrill to the chase and sometimes plain wear themselves out having fun, whether it's flying kites as big as a king-size mattress, canoeing in the Canadian wilderness, or meticulously recording the daily details of their everyday existence. In Working, Studs Terkel gave us an unforgettable oral history of the working life of an earlier generation. The Banana Sculptor, the Purple Lady, and the All-Night Swimmer is a history for our own times -- of the passionate pursuits by which so many of us define ourselves and of the universal search for happiness and a sense of fulfillment. Maybe you'll find yourself in the forty people profiled here. Maybe you'll find a hobby that you'll want to make your own. Either way, your life is likely to be enriched, just as the lives of the people you will read about are enriched by the depth of their commitment and the beauty of their accomplishments.

Leseprobe
Chapter One: Doug Fishbone: Lots of Bananas

As a youngster in Queens, New York, Doug Fishbone assumed he would grow up to be a doctor "because that was in the rhythm of the household and my father was a surgeon." One night, back when M*A*S*H was a hit television show, he was awakened by a bad dream: "I was performing surgery and I killed the patient." After he graduated from Amherst, where he was a music major, his substitute-career thought was to be "a wheeler-dealer business type." He spent some time in Israel selling a stretch fabric made of acetate and spandex, called Slinky. "I'm an easy-going guy, not a real grab-'em-by-the-lapel salesman, so I operated at a net loss," Fishbone, age thirty-two, says.

Fishbone returned to New York, got a job "in the financial field," and took some art classes. First he worked with clay, then with bronze. "I loved art and I hated my job, so I quit the financial gig and decided to devote myself to becoming an artist." As part of his preparation, he took a job at a bronze foundry in Long Island City. "Most of the guys I worked with were Ecuadorians. I used to go to salsa clubs with them to drink and dance. After ten months of learning how to weld and chase metal, I figured I wasn't going to learn much more. It was time to move on."

He was taken with the idea of going to Ecuador, heard about an art residency program in Cuenca, a city considered one of the nicest in the country, submitted a pack of photographs of his clay and bronze sculptures, and was invited to come. He arrived in March 1998. "You can live like a prince in Cuenca for fifty dollars a month. I was able to work almost full-time on my art instead of wearing a tie and scrounging to make a buck."

Fishbone went to a blacksmith's studio through the art program and worked on a piece of con…