This has been a big red-letter day on my calendar because it’s the day of author Simon Winchester’s appearance at the Carter Center.
He is touring to support his biography of the Atlantic Ocean, titled “Atlantic,” and if that sounds boring, then you haven’t read any of his works about the Oxford English Dictionary, the San Francisco earthquake, or a 19th-century geological map.
That’s the marvel of these books – I have shaken my head in awe reading them. How he is able to synthesize cultural, scientific and historical elements is a wonder. And even as he addressed the audience at the Carter Center tonight, he told amazing, almost cinematic stories.
What a memory! He explained how he got the idea for this book, from a night spent in Patagonia, where he spent the night in an estate library, reading until dawn.
The man has been everywhere, lived everywhere – Hong Kong, Argentina, even Belfast, Northern Ireland. And of all those places, where has he chosen to live? That’s right, the good old U.S. of A. He became an American citizen this past Fourth of July.
But he still carries some deep British reserve, as he confessed that he worried his new book’s dedication might be seen as overly sentimental. (It’s not.) And he had the Old World / New World style: blazer, complete with pocket square, and jeans.
He was trained as a geologist, and many of my fellow audience members were from the scientific community, a very learned group. But I thrilled to know that he always travels with a collection of poetry, and that he returns to it again, and enjoys it, and poetry helps shape his thoughts. That kind of omnivorous reading and thinking is what distills into his incredible books.
I might have shied away from getting a book signed after the talk, but knowing he’d lived in Belfast was just too much to pass up.
When it was my time, I was so glad to tell him that “A Crack in the Edge of the World” was the best book I read last year and that it enhanced my trip to San Francisco so much. We talked for a minute about the Barbary Coast, and then I mentioned that I, too, had lived in Belfast – post-Troubles. “Where did you live?” he asked. The Malone Road, near Queens, I said, and he nodded, saying he lived further out the Malone, in the Drumbeg area. Can you imagine?
He was so gallant and courteous, but I wanted to be sure I didn’t outstay my welcome. But I wasn’t going to miss a second photo op of a celebrity. So I geeked out and took a poor-quality photo of him.
What an enjoyable evening. I didn’t want it to end. So I decided to have a late dinner at one of the restaurants on my Atlanta list. I read my new book, enjoyed a fabulous meal, and marveled yet again at the literary skills of Simon Winchester.
Georgia Confidential 