Drowning Naked in Paradise & Other Essays. David Bakish
Drowning Naked in Paradise and Other Essays
David Bakish
Copyright © 2020 David Bakish
All rights reserved
First Edition
NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING
320 Broad Street
Red Bank, NJ 07701
First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2020
ISBN 978-1-64801-321-8 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-64801-322-5 (Digital)
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Something I Never Told Anyone Before
Amnesia through Age Five and Sitting Still
Two Wooden Candlestick Holders
A Most Flamboyant Teacher (Or Two)
From Louis Armstrong to Benny Goodman
Mental Chatter and My Tennis Game
The Care and Management of My Hair
Letter to a Landlord (Not Sent)
Commitments of a Would-Be Free Spirit
Friends—What and Who Are They?
Linda (February 15, 1950–January 1, 2018)
For Linda
Preface
This is my second self-published book after three others placed with regular firms—Richard Wright (Ungar), Afro-American Fiction, 1853-1976, with coauthor Edward Margolies (Gale Research), Jimmy Durante: His Show Business Career (McFarland).
I knew that my fourth book, a memoir, would not draw a publisher in what would have been a fruitless search and waste of time. Zero to Seventy-Five in 30 Snapshots was edited and formatted by my wife, Linda, who—among other jobs—had done some freelance editing for Scholastic Books. The resulting book, 265 pages, showed a professional touch in formatting the text and skillful placing of thirty photos. With a cherubic black-and-white photo of the author at age four as a cover and a color back cover of a mustached professor in his thirties, the book was registered with the Library of Congress and printed on demand by CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon, and listed on Amazon.com but had no other publicity. Complimentary copies drew mostly silence or an unexplained “wow!” from startled friends and silence from family.
Linda passed away from breast cancer complicated by progressive multiple sclerosis. Her long illness and death had me spending all my time trying to meet her needs as she struggled with unrelenting pain. My mind went into a deep depression in the precious time before and after she died.
As Thanksgiving 2019 approached, my mind awoke from the depths to resume work on this, my fifth book. The book is entitled Drowning Naked in