words I liked: Why Sinatra Matters by Pete Hamill

This was an interesting book with a fascinating individual profiled by somebody who was close to him without necessarily being intimate.

I read it because a book by Stephen King on writing listed it as an example of interesting wordcraft.

So much of the book is about the stories that were told, and the own memories of Sinatra. But how much can we rely on memory, or stories told, as an accurate representation?

“Sometimes I think I know what it was all about, and how everything happened,” he said one rainy night in New York. “But then I shake my head and wonder. Am I remembering what really happened or what other people think happened? Who the hell knows, after a certain point?”

Time can also soften both the image of a person, and that person’s care to control the entirety of their story:

Or perhaps, by the time I knew him, he had just grown out of his angers, exhausted them, and settled for what he was and the way he was regarded.

There were lots of interesting anecdotes about people and life other than just Sinatra in the book.

I picked this one out it evokes a certain imagery about the life and mind of somebody who lived a large part of their life in the night:

…insomniacs without wives can always be reached…

Just a really interesting way to describe what people are like when seeking to establish their identity:

…must have felt like characters in search of an author.

A good description of how to live in the moment:

She never looked back very much. She was alive today and looked forward to tomorrow.

…and grounding yourself, and making yourself, in reality:

…she was more concerned with living in the world as it was. And prospering in it.

One way to deal with a future that is looking dark:

Perhaps the apocalypse was here, the songs declared; if so, let’s dance.

…and there are both ups and downs in life.

…had come to realize that life was not one long string of triumphs.

Talking about the solitude that can be involved in being an only child, and how this can lead to performing or seeking an audience of some kind:

That is, he must go beyond the older people in his life, and find an audience. And he (or she) must find ways to deal with the deepest loneliness: the hours after the audience is gone and the boy closes the door to his room.

“There’s nothing worse when you are a kid than lying there in the dark,” he said to me once. “You got a million things in your head and nobody to tell them to.”

There is a lot in the book about Sinatra’s loneliness:

Across a lifetime he would make many attempts to relive loneliness, submerging it in marriages and love affairs, hard-drinking camaraderie, bursts of movement and action and anger, but the only thing that ever permanently worked was the music.

This is an amazing compliment from one singer to another:

“Every time Bing sang, it was a duet, and you were the other singer.”

I thought this paragraph about Bing Crosby was an interesting insight into how technological developments change the way that performers reach their audience. In this case the microphone and camera for a singer.

He knew he didn’t have to hit the second balcony with the belting style forced upon Broadway singers. The microphone permitted a more intimate connection with the audience. He didn’t have to italicize his acting in movies, the way theater-trained actors did; the close-up allowed him to be natural.