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KLMNO THE RELIABLE SOURCE Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger
THIS JUST IN Randy and Evi Quaid were arrested Saturday for felony residential burglary after officers from the sheriff ’s department found them living illegally in the guest house of their former Santa Barbara home, reports People. The actor and his wife, who have a record of shaky finances, sold the house years ago but told authorities they still owned it.
Randy Quaid and his wife, Evi, were arrested for burglary.
“It took me seven times to pass my driver’s test — you
shouldn’t have given up.”
— Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the DVD release party last week for Aviva Kempner’s documentary “Yoo-Hoo Mrs. Goldberg,” after the filmmaker said she went into moviemaking after failing the D.C. Bar exam twice.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
There are about 90 or so rich, well-connected members of the extended Kennedy family poised to assume their place in the storied American dynasty. First up: Katherine Schwarzenegger, the oldest daughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver and author of “Rock What You’ve Got,” a guide for tween and teenage girls. About 150 friends and family flocked to the Bethesda home of Mark and Jeanne Shriver (her uncle and aunt) Sunday afternoon to celebrate the first-time author.
More than just a name H
ere they come: the next generation of Kennedys/Shrivers/ Schwarzeneggers!
“I had an idea for a book and a passion about body image,” Schwarzenegger, 20, told us. “I submitted a proposal, just like every other person does, to several different publishers. I went down the exact same path that everyone who wants to write a book did. I didn’t get any special treatment with any of this.” But yes, she admits, Schwarzenegger is
a pretty unusual name. Anyway, she wanted to write a book for
teenagers struggling with changing body image and self-esteem because, she swears, it wasn’t easy for her. “I felt really self-conscious because all of a sudden I was getting hips and butt and boobs. . . . I didn’t really feel great about myself, but I was able to talk to my mom about everything.” Her famous parents shielded all their kids from the public eye as much as possible, so that didn’t add to the anxiety. It’s there for everyone, she said: “Every young girl who looks at a magazine feels the pressure to be thin, look perfect all the time, only feel beautiful if they’re a size 0 or 2.” We should note that Schwarzenegger is 5-foot-8, size 6 and gorgeous — which is why the junior at USC is majoring in communications and thinking about a TV career like her mother. Or maybe another book. “I’m really open to anything.”
LOVE, ETC. Married: Jack Evans and Michele Seiver Saturday in Georgetown. The Ward 2 councilman, 56, and interior designer, 52, tied the knot in front of 100 family and friends at Grace Episcopal Church, followed by a reception at Jack’s Boathouse under the Key Bridge. (Out-of-town guests scored goody bags with local treats including salted caramels by D.C. pastry chef David Guas, a close pal of Seiver.) The couple, who dated for three years, are D.C.’s version of the Brady Brunch: The blended family has three girls and three boys (ages 13-21), who all served as bridesmaids and groomsmen. Second marriage for both. No time for a honeymoon now, Evans told us, because they’re all busy with back-to-school activities. Hitched: Kelly
McGillis and girlfriend Melanie Leis last week in New Jersey. The “Top Gun” actress, 53, and sales exec, 42, were joined in a civil union at a local courthouse, reports the New York Times. McGillis came out last year; this is her third marriage.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
Kelly McGillis
PHOTOS BY KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver’s daughter, Katherine, signs a copy of her book, “Rock What You’ve Got,” for Zoe Ungerman. Top, Katherine’s cousin Rosie Shriver is at right.
COURTESY TONY POWELL
Jack Evans and Michele Seiver officially blend their families.
GOT A TIP ? E-MAIL U S A T RELIABLESOURCE@WASHP OST . COM. FOR THE LA TEST SCOOPS, VISIT WA SHINGTONP OST . COM/RELIABLESOUR CE BOOK WORLD
A happy life, imperiled by a bizarre and brutal encounter W
by Patrick Anderson
e don’t often encounter novels that combine shrewd plotting, strong
characters and gorgeous writing, but Scott Spencer’s “Man in the Woods” does precisely that. It’s about many things, including love, God and the random acci- dents that can change our lives. Spencer’s most famous novel, “Endless Love” (1979), dealt with obsessive teenage passion; this one is about grown-ups confront- ing both the joys and dangers that love can bring. The lovers are Kate Ellis and
Paul Phillips. When Kate ap- peared in Spencer’s 2004 novel, “A Ship Made of Paper,” she was
IMOGEN QUEST by Olivia Walch Winner of The Post’s “America’s Next Great Cartoonist” contest.
MAN IN THE WOODS By Scott Spencer Ecco. 305 pp. $24.99
drinking too much and losing her lover to another woman. But much has changed in the new book, set in the closing months of 1999. Kate has embraced both Al- coholics Anonymous and Chris- tianity, and written an inspira- tional, best-selling book about her new life. Moreover, she’s fall- en wildly in love with Paul, and they’re living together, along with her 8-year-old daughter, in her house in the Hudson River Valley. Good-hearted Kate, in her early 40s, is bright, articulate and lusty; taciturn Paul, a master car- penter, is 10 years older, hand- some, independent and more spiritual than religious. They’re one of the healthiest, happiest couples you’ll find in today’s fic- tion.
But, this being a Scott Spencer novel, their happiness is soon im- periled. Early in the book, return- ing home after a frustrating day in Manhattan, Paul stops in a state park to unwind and hap- pens on a man who is beating his dog. Paul asks him to stop, the man takes offense, a fight ensues, and, to Paul’s horror, the man dies, whereupon Paul flees. When he tells Kate what happened, she fully supports him. Nothing ap- pears in the papers, and they hope the whole thing will go away. However, we readers know what Paul and Kate do not, that a dogged ex-policeman is pursuing the case. Thus, an agonizing question hovers over the rest of the story: Will these two decent people have their happiness de-
stroyed (perhaps by manslaugh- ter charges) because of a sense- less encounter with an unbal- anced man? It’s a good plot, but we often
forget about it as we’re swept along by the beauty of Spencer’s writing. Here, for example, is a glimpse of Kate’s daughter: “She shields her eyes with her little starfish of a hand.” Kate jokes about AA gatherings where “there is an unspoken competi- tion in these meetings, a race to the bottom, in which having suf- fered the greatest humiliations, the most bewildering blackouts, the most irrevocable losses of love, occupation, position, and self-respect makes you the win- ner.” But she’s not joking when she tells a friend who’s fallen off the wagon: “It’s like a demon, Sonny, and it’s furious with you for turning your back on it. It will do anything and say anything to get you to put it inside of you.” Born-again Kate agonizes a lot about religion: “Kate has some- times despaired that the average intelligence in the nation of un- believers is drastically higher than the intelligence in the de- vout community.... Yet if Christ and his message are real, then the dumbbells win and the chrome domes lose.” Sometimes Paul seems to have become her reli- gion: “Holy is the silence he af- fords her when he sees she is thinking, holy are the windows he has placed in her house, in her life, and her soul, holy is the smell of wood, holy is the carpenter, holy is his gaze when she is speaking, holy is the catch in his
DOONESBURY by Garry Trudeau CUL DE SAC by Richard Thompson
breath when she kisses him....” Her eloquent tribute ends, finally, “Holy is his stumbling circular path to God.” And here is Paul on Kate: “He is not unfamiliar with successful people, but he has never had a re- lationship with a woman of large and worldly achievement, and the pleasure it brings him to bask in the reflected glow of her suc- cess has been a surprise to Paul, with an unexpected erotic com- ponent. There is something grand about going home with a woman everybody loves.” And: “He loves her expression during sex, open and undefended, with a creaturely purity and singularity of purpose.” This is a book to savor and read aloud, a book that is variously wise, funny and heartbreaking. But how does it end? What about the man in the woods? Poor Kate worries incessantly that “they will never outrun it, it will catch up to him, to them, it will destroy everything. ” The outcome must not be revealed here, except to say that it is as powerful as every- thing else in the book. “Man in the Woods” is one of the three best novels I’ve read this year — the others are Laura Lippman’s “I’d Know You Anywhere” and Jennifer Egan’s “A Visit From the Goon Squad” — and if you pressed me, I’d put it at the top of the list.
bookworld@washpost.com
Scott Spencer will speak at the National Book Festival on Sept. 25 at 2:30 p.m. in the Fiction & Mystery pavilion.
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