one of the perks of being an editorial assistant at Columbia College Today, the official alumni magazine of Columbia College, for more than three years was the opportunity to attend the private wine tastings held by Ken Catandella, executive director of alumni affairs and development, whose responsibilities included overseeing the big-time events such as the yearly alumni reunion and homecoming. Ken, who is on the short side and has a mustache, is an eloquent speaker who loves to entertain audiences of all sizes with his knowledge of wines. as a connoisseur, he has traveled all over the world on his spare time to visit vineyards and to taste all sorts of grapes and vintages. he told me that wine knowledge required constant upkeep – ten or twenty minutes of reading here and there, a taste of this and that, good notes, etc. – and that he personally tried to get at least half an hour of fresh new wine material reading each night.

one of my favorite moments at the alumni affairs office was when Ken would bring boxes of wines to the conference room and offer them to the staff for incredibly low prices. i remember, as a curious sophomore, i would snoop around and taste the seven or eight types of wines that Ken brought and explained to everyone. at first, i used these wines to wash down the cheese and biscuits i had stuffed into my mouth, occasionally feeling the buzz after the tenth glass. but with every sip, i began to distinguish the taste little by little. by late junior year, i was buying as many bottles as i could carry each time Ken held these fire sales. and my curiosity for wine grew.

while the film Sideways seems to have made wine into a more accessible commodity, i’ve always appreciated the early exposure to the world of wine through Ken. from time to time, i would ask him which wines would go well with certain foods, and i would ask which vintage of a particular region would be a best buy at the moment. he always had answers and more. i can still remember the time he recommended a Picpoul to go along with Asian foods – especially Chinese and Thai – and boy, did that hit the spot. i still tell my friends that if you want “summer in a bottle,” they should go for a Picpoul (white). and remember – sauvignon blancs from New Zealand have the wonderfully citrusy flavor and more fruit than the California ones.

in anticipation for my upcoming roadtrip with Andy to Vermont this weekend, where we plan to visit three or four wineries and also make a stop at the Magic Hat brewery, i emailed Ken and asked him if he knew anything about Vermont wines and for any other general tips. he replied:

Peter,

Best,
Ken

Heart-warming tips from the man who got me to enjoy wines. I hope Vermont isn’t as terrible as it sounds. At worst, we can always knock back some sweet, fruity wines back in our hotel room, which, coincidentally, is in Shelburne.

Speaking of my days at CCT, I realized that my final article written for the magazine came out a few weeks ago. It was my last Bookshelf Box piece on author Robert Emmet Long, who has written extensively on Merchant Ivory, the independent and critically-acclaimed film company. it was really inspiring to interview Mr. Long, who has spent a great deal of his life writing intellectual criticism in literature, theater, and film. and to see someone of his age (seventies) continue to write so prolifically is truly admirable. I really value the time I had at CCT because of the special access I had to a wide range of writers – from erudite scholars to pop noir writers to chicklet lifestyle guides – and how i was expected, at least one book at a time, to feel, or at least pretend to be, familiar with an author’s genre. knowing the right questions to ask can mean the difference between an engaging article and an uninteresting one — hopefully some people have found these writers to be interesting over the years.

well, it’s late and i must bid farewell. work isn’t so bad, and i found a nice place to drink champagne late into the night only four blocks away (a place called Flute) — anyone interested?

there was a pretty girl i once knew who was an English major. i told her about Robert Penn Warren, poet laureate and author of one of my favorite books, All the King’s Men. she wasn’t familiar with the name but scoffed at the author because he had a “pretentious three-part name.” i had never heard such a thing before since i thought that authors usually go by whatever their names were or whatever they were comfortable calling themselves. Robert Penn Warren sounded harmless enough for me, and i couldn’t imagine where this pretension was coming from.

on Tuesday, i sat at my cubicle and stared at the monitor as my computer generated cashflows for an ABS CDO (asset-backed securities collateral debt obligation). just few days before, i had picked up Native Speaker, written by Chang-Rae Lee, off of my bookshelf and begun re-reading parts of it. midway through the third chapter, i realized that Native Speaker would make a great film. i wondered how i would go about adapting the screenplay and even went as far as to imagine who would play the part of Henry or Lelia in the film. i went as far as to begin planning my future weekends to devote to the project of adapting the novel. so when i sat in front of my computer watching numbers count up slowly, i decided to email the author, the Princeton professor, Chang-Rae Lee.

in the email, i briefly mentioned my own film experience and how i would love to adapt Native Speaker into a delicate screenplay. and i also let loose the fan in me, letting him know how much i appreciated his work. i also told him that, like himself, i too was in finance right out of undergrad, although i wasn’t sure if this was the path i would continue to take. i finished off by saying that i loved to write and continued to do so almost daily. i told him that cashflows were being generated behind the email box i was writing to him. i sent it and stared blankly at the monitor for another few minutes.

today, he replied. although short and definitely a polite “no” to my screenplay idea, it was a nice feeling to receive something from an author i admired so much. how many times had i felt his narrative partly telling my own life story? if anything, i was inspired to write more.

Thanks for your thoughtful, and kind, note. I appreciate your interest
but unfortunately those rights [for the screenplay] are already spoken for,
and so you’re out of luck. I do want to say that I appreciate your interest in
the novel, and hope that you’ll continue to work through those long, long
nights of number crunching — as you suspect, I felt similarly all those
years ago, sort of just biding my time. Good luck with the work.

Best wishes,
CRL

and i thought how funny it was that he signed his named that way – three parts.

for your reading pleasure, i found this extensive interview of CRL in which he discusses all his novels to date as well as other questions, such as the media’s comparisons of him to Kazuo Ishiguro (which he doesn’t seem to like too much).