Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

Eugene Walter may be the most interesting man you've never heard of. He surrounded himself with the creative, the artistic, and the beautiful in life, inhabiting the circles of greatness without creating the name for himself that many of his contemporaries did.

Milking the Moon traces Eugene's history in his own words from his childhood in Mobile, Alabama, through his years in New York, Paris, and Rome, to his return to his hometown. Throughout, it captures Eugene's sense of wonder at the world around him, and reads as a veritable Who's Who of mid-twentieth-century literary life.

Eugene's anecdotes regarding the famous and near-famous seem the ultimate insider's gossip column; they offer personal glimpses of a time and place that existed in stark comparison to mid-century America. The narrative is bubbling with Eugene's personal charm, punctuated by the rhythm of his voice. It recreates the spirit of listening to him recount his adventures at home, sitting across the room from him.

The only weakness in the biography is the lack of a comprehensive index. An appendix list a cast of characters with mini-biographies for persons mentioned in the book with out citing reference pages.

In all, the book is an excellent depiction of a life lived to its fullest, told with wit and candor, and full of wonderfully entertaining moments.

For years I bored my friends with my tales of Eugene Walter until one day I was confronted by a very special friend with a photo of herself and Eugene in Rome. Her husband was a noted anthropologist with the Smithsonian and someone had told them that here was a "must meet" person! So there they were grinning like small children at a birthday party.
Eugene and I were friends from adolescence and I followed his goings and comings with great interest all the way, through his work with the CCC in the early Roosevelt years and on until his death. I am finding this book a complete delight, almost as wonderful as being with the maestro and listening to his tales all over again.
He had a knack of gathering to himself the most fascinating people wherever he found himself and, as he says, there's nothing like a party, so wherever he might be, there you could be sure a party was either in progress or a-planning. The zany hilarity in heaven upon his arrival a couple of years ago must still be echoing.
If you wish to walk a while in the company of one of the most entertaining, brilliant and hilariously funny bon vivants, raconteurs, chefs, artists, actors, scene designers, etc., etc., etc. read this book. A tale of a Southern gentle man of great talent, almost too much so for his own good!

I'm usually about as materialistic as Eugene Walter-- which is to say not very-- but I'm being very cautious about loaning my copy of the this book, scared to death I'll lose it. This is one of the best books I have ever read (other favorites in this genre are How I Became Hettie Jones and Joyce Johnson's Minor Characters). I know that most of that is the fabulous Walter himself, but a lot of it has to be to Clark's skill as an editor. Letting a subject speak in his or her own voice is very difficult, and Clark does it wonderfully. It reminds me of Walter's anecdote about how he translated scripts-- he threw the original script away and let the essence shine through. Clark lets Walter shine through.

I completely fell under the spell of Eugene Walter but must pay homage to author Katherine Clark for seamlessly allowing us to believe we are spending hour after hour with Eugene as he spins fascinating story after fascinating story about his southern childhood, his friends, both famous and obscure, and what it was like to work in every capacity on Fellini movies. Recently I saw a friend from Mobile and said, "I'm just going to say two words to you. EUGENE WALTER. It was so satisfying to see her face light up and hear her squeal, "I LOVE EUGENE WALTER!!!!"

I bought this book based on the NYTimes Review. Thoughts were, "If I can be on the treadmill, laughing out loud just reading a review--it's a must-read!"
Recommended it to everyone I knew, even though I was only into a few pages--it's a grabber from the start--can just picture him as the King of Cats & Onions, for starters.
In our daily lives, when we take ourselves so seriously, how delightful to read about someone who had such a wonderful sense of true joy. He's opened my eyes to a new perspective--to feel the fur of a cat, the smile of someone's eyes, & the humorous little trippings up of life! My next party will be with VERY unusual foods, as well as VERY unusual guests! Found myself wanting to plan a party right away, with this book as the guest of honor!!!

Walker is a Southern storyteller. He more than fits his own definition of one who speaks with dozens of side tales (parentheses). Webster calls these parenthetical expressions "a remark or passage that departs from the theme of a discourse." Walker may depart from the theme, but he always returns, and it always fits. He says: "The mark of a good storyteller is: Have a whole shelf full of shoeboxes of details.... It's like those ballad singers at the Scottish lords who improvised new verses for those ballads every night...." What music this Southern balladeer makes especially as he explains the use of the Southern front porch for storytelling, visiting, shelling peas, and an explanation of the etiquette of porch visiting. He even makes a detour (parentheses) to explain how front and back porches differ (shell peas on the front porch, shrimp on the back). One comes away understanding why Walker fit in so perfectly with the side walk café salons of Paris and Rome. The Southern porches were his training ground. Those were the original talking salons. One almost hears the music of porch furniture: "...a whole world of wicker or rattan chairs and divans and tables and plant stands and swings big enough for three people. How I wish some composer had heard, as I, the different sounds of porch swings. Everything from rattle-squeak to crunch-budge-tink. With a bass accompaniment of shuffling feet, often bare." Ah, these were the real salons, set to music, before people had to go to Paris to talk and before Americans discovered those faux porches that serve as little more than standing room on the front of today's dull houses. Walker explains the South as he remembers it, the South he carried with him around the world, and it makes any Southerner long for the South of his/her youth, or it beckons any curious Yankee to come and savor a romantic time and place that they've never experienced....

In the South, when one becomes known as "a character", they ascend to a place chock full of regional legends and local colors. Eugene Walter, a well established character in Mobile, was a ticket back in time as well as all over the planet. Quick to share his stories with others (but only if you asked him first), he was loved by all Mobilians, present company included.

Milking The Moon is a must have book for anyone who is just discovering Eugene Walter, it is a touchstone for those who knew him and miss him awful! He captures the true spirit of the Southern wit, he was the Poet Laureate of Mobile! Eugene was Southern Hospitality personified with a little bit of a Port-induced sting. This is one of my treasured books, when I have a bad day, I pull Eugene off the shelf, read a few pages, and suddenly my day is blissfully askew, Eugene Style!