TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE

There are only two weeks left to tell the world what you want to do before you die. So say a pair of editors preparing a book of last wishes to be published (they say) early next year by Little, Brown & Company. I haven't checked with Little, Brown. The editors, Mike and Chris, have a Website, 2dobeforeidie.com, where they're inviting submissions and where you can read stories that have already come in.

I have no idea who they are, but I don't think Chris and Mike are end-of-the-worlders or anyone like that. "The aim of the book," they messaged, "is to spark thoughts, conversation and action about what's important and what's possible, encouraging people to consider what would really be on their list of things to do before they die." They're also looking for "true stories" and want "as many people as possible to send something in to the site about something they've already done that's memorable or satisfying as they look back on their life so far."

The due date for all story submissions for the book is April 30. "Unfortunately," they say, "as this is just one notch above a labor of love, we're currently unable to pay for any stories received." That part of the project troubles me. If it's one notch above a labor of love, shouldn't they pay one notch above no-pay? Does the proviso "currently" mean they will pay in the future? Besides, Little, Brown & Company (which is owned by Time Warner Inc.) was a labor of profit the last time I looked.

April 14, 2004 9:29 AM |

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Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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