Milking the Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet [Paperback]

Eugene Walter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 23, 2002

This sumptuous oral biography of Eugene Walter, the best-known man you’ve never heard of, is an eyewitness history of the heart of the last century—enlivened with personal glimpses of luminaries from William Faulkner and Martha Graham to Judy Garland and Leontyne Price—and a pitch-perfect addition to the Southern literary tradition that has critics cheering. In his 76 years, Eugene Walter ate of “the ripened heart of life,” to quote a letter from Isak Dinesen, one of his many illustrious friends. Walter savored the porch life of his native Mobile, Alabama, in the 1920s and ’30s; stumbled into the Greenwich Village art scene in late-1940s New York; was a ubiquitous presence in Paris’s expatriate café society in the 1950s (where he was part of the Paris Review at its inception); and later, in 1960s Rome, participated in the golden age of Italian cinema. He was somehow everywhere, bringing with him a unique and contagious spirit, putting his inimitable stamp on the cultural life of the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When Katherine Clark began interviewing Eugene Walter (1921-98) in 1991 for an oral biography of this Mobile, Alabama, legend's picaresque life, friends asked her, "Do you think he will tell you the truth?" "I certainly hope not!" she replied. Clark, herself a Southerner, understood that the charm of Walter's conversation came from his brilliantly polished stories, in which "at a certain point the actual gives way to the apocryphal." So readers shouldn't ask if Tallulah Bankhead really gave Walter three pubic hairs or if Anna Magnani actually asked the mayor of Rome to help find Walter's lost cat: that's not the point. These anecdotes express Walter's appreciation of people he likes, and although the narrative is stuffed with famous names from Truman Capote to Leontyne Price, the exuberant protagonist finds less celebrated folks just as fascinating. His loving evocation of Mobile in the 1920s, when the front porch was the center of all social life, is just as detailed as his portraits of sojourns in more glamorous enclaves: Greenwich Village after World War II ("where I could sit in the evenings and hear Jane and Paul Bowles quarreling in their nearby apartment"); Paris in the early 1950s (his short story "Troubador" appeared in the first issue of Paris Review); and Rome during its La Dolce Vita years. Walter refused Fellini's plea that he perform with his marionettes in that particular movie, but he played an American journalist in 8 1/2 and "must have been in over a hundred of those crazy Italian films" before returning to Mobile in 1979. ("Sooner or later all Southerners come home, not to die, but to eat gumbo.") Clark, who captured an Alabama midwife's wisdom in Motherwit, gets out of her subject's way and lets his words create an enchanting world in this marvelously entertaining reminiscence. --Wendy Smith --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

"I'm just a Southern boy let loose in the big world," declares Walter in his delightful oral autobiography, the culmination of months of talks with literature professor Clark (Motherwit: An Alabama Midwife's Story). Born in 1921 in Mobile, Ala., (which is, he notes, "a separate kingdom. We are not North America; we are North Haiti"), Walter spent most of his adulthood in New York, Paris and Rome, where he published a prize-winning novel (The Untidy Pilgrim, 1954), translated hundreds of screenplays, helped found the Paris Review, appeared in Fellini films and figured centrally in the social life of the literati, entertaining everyone from T.S. Eliot to Muriel Spark to Dylan Thomas at his lavish parties. Legendary both in his hometown and among the European jet set of the '50s and '60s, Walter displays an abiding fascination with people of all kinds. Astute and opinionated, he comments more on the personalities than the output of his literary associates. Unconcerned with material success or critical renown, Walter, who died in 1998, was in perennial pursuit of lively and provocative encounters with interesting people. In this respect, Clark observes, he's "so classically Southern as to be archetypal"; indeed, Walter, who traveled with a shoebox filled with Alabama red clay dirt, filters all his experiences through an explicitly Southern perspective that is alternately provincial and insightful. After her own encounters with him, Clark was convinced that his eccentric, ebullient voice was worth preserving, and indeed he comes through as one of the most fascinating literary figures most of us have never heard of. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)Forecast: Deliciously gossipy, this will make great late summer reading for the literate set and should sell briskly if it gets review attention.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1st edition (April 23, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609809652
• ISBN-13: 978-0609809655
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 4.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #409,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Feel The Magic, September 5, 2001

By 

John Hastings (Kansas City, Missouri) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Milking the Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet (Hardcover)

I am an unashamed perfervid Biblioholic. I own thousands of books. Literary biography is my preferred logocentric drug of choice. If I could keep just one book from my library it would undoubtedly be Milking the Moon.

Good books find me (it's a healthy relationship with the muse) and this one scooted into my hungry paws with a supernatural abandon that surprised even me.

Eugene Walter is a composite of a million different felicities. Though I didn't know him in the flesh he is now my friend for life. I've tramped around with him from the mossy environs of Mobile, where everybody is crazy, to Patchen Place to the Cafe de Tournon and tea with Alice Babette Toklas who waxed her moustache and pined for her absent, commaless companion.

The fabulous stories never cease; they knead into, flow into,dance into each other like the creation of the universe. Eugene and his life and his marvelous stories are the music of the spheres. If as Mr. Pater says--All art aspires to the condition of music--stop for a moment and let Eugene play for you.Dance with Tallu and Gore and the monkey and the Caribou and all the rest of the protean crazies Eugene encountered and annointed with his presence.

Take out a bank loan and buy everyone you know a copy of Milking the Moon.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just like talking to Eugene., March 18, 2002

By 

thefallingman (Sackets Harbor, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Milking the Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet (Hardcover)

I suppose I was one of the fortunate few who had a chance to meet Eugene before he died. The people I was working for back in the mid-nineties were friends of his and, therefore, I had the chance to be around him.

Eugene was the consummate storyteller. One of those who never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn. His idea was to make you enjoy where you were and who you were. To inject a little wonderousness into the world. Although based in truth, nothing he told was strictly true.

This book captures him almost perfectly. Although it cannot convey his gestures and antics and voice, it does convey his mind and gift for gab. Pour yourself a glass of port and read with the voice of an eccentric Southern uncle in your head and Eugene starts to come out. It's not quite the same as being there, but this book is as close as any of us will ever be again.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant. Best read in a long time., October 30, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Milking the Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet (Hardcover)

I recycled my newspapers on September 11. (Mundane chores help.)The front page of the Washington Post Book Review in some week in August caught my eye. I read the review by Jonathan Yardley and promptly bought the book. When the horror of world events got too much, I'd retreat to Mobile, Alabama, Paris, and Rome as told by Eugene Walter. What a life. I didn't think I could feel giddy and goofy again. This guy knew what living was all about. Friends and food and art and goofiness and wit -- I love the stories about his 3 years as a cryptographer during WW2 in the Aleutian Islands and the moose. The man couldn't be boring if he tried. I'm buying everyone on my xmas list this book. Check it out.