On The Move

This past weekend I spent Saturday night in Chicago for a friend's wedding--the most lavish wedding I have ever helped to celebrate. Best of all, the bride and groom had love-silly grins plastered across their faces the entire time. The bride did the limbo; the groom (and all 15 groomsmen) changed into black and white Chuck Taylor All Stars to better groove to the live band. Did I mention the twelve bagpipers piping in a parade into the grand ballroom to lead the 450 guests to dinner? Outstanding.

This week is all about packing. And all about reading instead of packing. We leave Boston to return to our Indiana abode on Monday of this coming week. By this time next week, I may already be "home." I am in exquisite denial. The truth is that I can be happy here or there, which is a good thing. Any transition, however, can be fraught. Change is good--in theory.

Speaking of change, welcome to my newest niece! She is tiny, but tough with lots of black hair.

In the meantime, I am typing away again on my novel. Today I passed the 50,000 word mark. (Author pats herself on the back and grins to the chagrin of her fellow cafe hunt-and-peckers on Newbury street.) Actually, my original plan for the piece was 50,000 words. It is quite clear, however, that I will need at least another 20,000 to round out the story.

For the record: since my last blog we dined at an amazing restaurant, Sorellina. The setting was ultra-cool and the food was divine. This was an eating experience made all the more transcendent by our company--a Roman and an Athenian! Go for the truffled fries--seriously the best french fries I have ever eaten (and I am, sadly, an expert.)

Ugh. Time to pack up my laptop and head home to face the boxes. Packing is lame.

The Myth of You & Me by Leah Stewart

All right kids, this is it: I am in full flush after just finishing a new novel. This book wasn't even on my bookshelf!

Yesterday I was browsing at the Brookline Booksmith and the red cover caught my eye. The book jacket blurb went something like"blah blah blah captures the intensity of a friendship as well as the real sense of loss that lingers after the end of one blah blah etc." I bought it. And a little shy of 24 hours later, I have turned the last page.

These characters are my age and might as well be my reflection in terms of experience. The tale is simply told and captures the beautiful angst of frienships forsaken (and reforged?). What a delicous read--especially if you too used to have big hair shellacked with AquaNet and then grew up together with your college friends. Read it. And beware: I may be forced to send this book via Amazon to you and then compel you to read it too....

The Myth of You & Me by Leah Stewart

Her website is: http://www.leahstewart.com/

Walt Whitman

excerpts from Song of Myself

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor

look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres

in books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things

from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

*****

Urge and urge and urge,

Always the procreant urge of the world.

*****

Do you take it I would astonish?

Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering

through the woods?

Do I astonish more than they?

*****

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

*****

I believe in the flesh and the appetites,

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of

me is a miracle.

*****

All truths wait in all things,

They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,

They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,

The insignificant is as big to me as any,

(What is less or more than a touch?)

*****

Enough! enough! enough!

Somehow I have been stunn’d. Stand back!

Give me a little time beyond my cuff’d head, slumbers, dreams,

gaping,

I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

*****

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Mrs. World Fiasco

The following horrible real life drama is almost too painful to watch. Mrs. DF sent me the note below and the link to a video. Please read first and then view the fiasco.
Ouch.
It makes me feel both sad for the women involved and grateful for my far less dramatic (and less public) life.

********************************************************************************

at the 2006 miss world pageant in russia---did you hear what happened?

they were down to the last 2 girls, miss russia and miss costa rica and neither spoke english . . . nor did most of the audience

so allan thicke is the host and he has some woman helping him who barely speaks english and you know how they usually tell you the first runner up . . . and then the camera goes to the winner and they all celebrate?

well allan says "the runner up is miss costa rica!" and there's a cheer and then you can kinda hear him say "the winner is miss russia" but the celebrations have begun and the woman helping him puts the miss world sash on miss costa rica.

girls come running down to congratulate those that speak english look confused a little girl dressed as an angel is lowered from the ceiling with the crown and they put it on miss costa rica.

allan walks off the stage, the producer is furious and yells at the helper woman.

so now they have to do something, right?

so the go back out and tell everyone the mistake---miss costa rica is dethroned, she's bawling, many of the other contestants are furious and storm off. . . .

and they replay the WHOLE thing there are only about 10 or 12 women left on stage miss costa rica i think is still there crying and they say "the winner is miss russia!"

the angel comes back down, . . . etc. etc

*******************************************************************************

Now view the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TJ_UKt4QtQ

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

I picked up a copy of Robinson's novel Gilead after it was recommended to me by a literary agent at the Grub Street conference. The agent had read a sample of my novel and suggested Robinson's work as an author I could learn from. As I made my way through the text I noted her flawless prose and use of details. I also read to notice how Robinson makes use of a first person narrator. My own work is currently told from the first person and I find that I need more writerly tools to make the most of his point-of-view.

Gilead is a ponderous novel. It is an epistolary novel written by a 76 year-old pastor in 1956 Iowa to his seven-year-old son. The pastor is near death and wants to write to his son who will not remember him after his death.

I finished the novel a few weeks ago and only today picked up my copy to give it more thought. As I paged through and reread sections, I was impressed more deeply by the language and the ideas in the novel. So please forgive the extensive excerpts. (I actually left out sections that were noteworthy!)

Memorable Quotes

(hardcover first edition, 2004)

I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I’m old, and you said, I don’t think you’re old. And you put your hand in my hand and you said, You aren’t very old, as if that settled it. I told you might have a very different life from mine, and from the life you’ve had with me, and that would be a wonderful thing, there are many ways to live a good life. And you said, Mama already told me that. And then you said, Don’t laugh! because you thought I was laughing at you. You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother’s. It’s a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I’m always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I’ve suffered one of those looks. I will miss them. (Opening paragraph)

You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension. (p 7)

There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily. It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that. (p 23)

That was the first time in my life I ever knew what it was to love another human being. Not that I hadn’t loved people before. But I hadn’t realized what it meant to love them before. (p 55)

I was always amazed, watching grownups, at the way they seemed to know what was to be done in any situation, to know what was the decent thing. (p 95)

So you must not judge what I know by what I find words for. (p 114)

There is something in her face I have always felt I must be sufficient to, as if there is a truth in it that tests the meaning of what I say. (p 137)

But I believe that the rewards of obedience are great, because at the root of real honor is always the sense of the sacredness of the person who is its object. (p 139)

And often enough, when we think we are protecting ourselves, we are struggling against our rescuer. (p 154)

Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense. (p 177)

My custom has always been to ponder grief; that is, to follow it through ventricle and aorta to find out its lurking places. (p 179)

The tact was audible. (p 186)

I don’t know exactly what covetise is, but in my experience it is not so much desiring someone else’s virtue or happiness as rejecting it, taking offense at the beauty of it. (p 188)

One interesting aspect of the whole experience was that I simply could not be honest with myself, and I couldn’t deceive myself, either. (p 203)

. . . that was the first time in my life I ever felt I could be snatched out of my character, my calling, my reputation, as if they could just fall away like a dry husk. (p 205)

Love is holy because it is like grace—the worthiness of its object is never really what matters. (p 209)

There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal. So how could it subordinate itself to cause or consequence? (p 238)

There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient. (p 243)

It seems to me that when something really ought to be true then it has a very powerful truth, which starts me thinking again about heaven. (p 244)

A Few Good Words

susurrus: etymology: Latin, hum, whisper; a whispering or rustling sound

crepuscular: of, relating to, or resembling twilight OR active in the twilight

Model sentences

Here I am trying to be wise, the way a father should be, the way an old pastor certainly should be. (p 56)

I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens it eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. (p 57)

In any case, it felt so necessary to me to walk up the road. . . . (74)

I was standing there, taking it in, trying to decide what to do, when the old man wheeled around and planted that stare on me. (p 98)

I conceal my motives from myself pretty effectively sometimes. (p 147)

Your mother looked at me, so I knew I must have sounded upset. I was upset. (p 152)

Useful Links

NPR Terry Gross Interview with Marilynne Robinson on Gilead
(I highly recommend this interview--very thoughtful)

Saturday by Ian McEwan

I recently finished Saturday, by Ian McEwan. I consider his book, Atonement, one of my favorite novels. So I was intrigued to read another piece of his work.


Saturday is set in London post 9/11 and just before the war with Iraq. The events take place on one Saturday and are told from a neurosurgeon's point-of-view. Henry Perowne is happily married with two artistic children--a poet and a blues musician. His cherished Saturday begins early when he awakens and views a burning plane make an emergency landing. We follow him as he interacts with his children and wife, plays a mean (and long) game of squash, shops for dinner, and cooks a fish stew for a family dinner. (Yes, he even cooks.) This typical Saturday is laced with conflict brought about by a random encounter with a less-fortunate street guy--a tough guy whose Huntington’s Disease the neurosurgeon readily diagnoses in the middle of road rage in the streets of London.

I admit that I was not immediately hooked by the story. The characters, however, and the choreography are finely drawn. And I did feel my pulse race as McEwan built tension and suspense into the narrative. Any book that elevates my heart rate is doing something right.

This book made the New York Times top ten books of 2005. Indeed it does capture modern life and a thoroughly recognizable attempt to "make sense" of a world on the brink of war.

Memorable Quotes
(page numbers from paperback First Anchor Books Edition, April 2006)

The primitive thinking of the supernaturally inclined amounts to what his psychiatric colleagues call a problem, or an idea, of reference. An excess of the subjective, the ordering of the world in line with your needs, an inability to contemplate your own unimportance. ( p 17)

She remained in silent contact with an imaginary intimate. (p 48)

Happiness seemed like a betrayal of principle, but happiness was unavoidable. (p 49)

This reading list persuaded Perowne that the supernatural was the recourse of an insufficient imagination, a dereliction of duty, a childish evasion of the difficulties and wonders of the real, of the demanding re-enactment of the plausible. (p 66)

Work that you cannot begin to imagine achieving yourself, that displays a ruthless, nearly inhuman element of self-enclosed perfection—this is his idea of genius. This notion of Daisy’s, that people can’t “live” without stories, is simply not true. He is living proof.

There is much in human affairs that can be accounted for at the level of the complex molecule. Who could eve reckon up the damage done to love and friendship and all hopes of happiness by a surfeit or depletion of this or that neurotransmitter? And who will ever find a morality, an ethics down among the enzymes and amino acids when the general taste is for looking in the other direction? (p 92)

There are so many ways a brain can let you down. Like an expensive car, it’s intricate, but mass-produced nevertheless, with more than six billion in circulation. (p 99)

A race of extraterrestrial grown-ups is needed to set right the general disorder, then put everyone to bed for an early night. God was once supposed to be a grown-up, but in disputes He childishly took sides. Then sending us an actual child, one of His own—the last thing we needed. A spinning rock already swarming with orphans. . . (p 122)

It isn’t rationalism that will overcome the religious zealots, but ordinary shopping and all it entails—jobs for a start, and peace, and some commitment to realizable pleasures, the promise of appetites sated in this world, not the next. Rather shop than pray. (p 127)

Unlike in Daisy’s novels, moments of precise reckoning are rare in real life; questions of misinterpretation are not often resolved. Nor do they remain pressingly unresolved. They simple fade. People don’t remember clearly, or they die, or the questions die and new ones take their place. (p 159)

There are these rare moments when musicians together touch something sweeter than they’ve ever found before in rehearsals or performance, beyond the merely collaborative or technically proficient, when their expression becomes as easy and graceful as friendship or love. This is when they give us a glimpse of what we might be, of our best selves, and of an impossible world in which you give everything you have to others, but lose nothing of yourself. (p 176)

When there are no consequences, being wrong is simply an interesting diversion. (p 198)

Useful Link

Ian McEwan's Website: Saturday
(Includes a reading guide, reviews of the book AND a recipe for the Fish Stew)

Edith Wharton, et al.

In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.
--Edith Wharton, US Novelist (1862-1937)

***

It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would aprove; and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections, to which you might revert with pleasure.
--Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847)

***

A self-narrative that meets the accuracy, peace-of-mind, and believeablity criteria is likely to be a quite useful one, precisely by avoiding too much instropsection.
--Timothy D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves (2002)

***

“And the truth is that the truth can never ultimately hurt.”
--Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones (1986)

***

“Anything we fully do is an alone journey. . . . you can’t expect anyone to match the intensity of your emotions.”
--Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones (1986)

***

“Writing practice softens the heart and mind, helps to keep us flexible so that rigid distinctions between apples and milk, tigers and celery, disappear.”
--Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones (1986)

Caroline, or Change

Last night L. and I saw the brilliant musical "Caroline, or Change," book and lyrics by Pulitzer and Tony Award Winner Tony Kushner. It has been a long time since I willingly attended a musical and even longer since I might have even considered using brilliant to modify musical, but. The musical is witty, true. I suppose I mean brilliant in that quirky impressed British way of saying it. Brilliant! Sans irony, of course,which might leave me with beautiful as a better choice to describe the work.

I purchased tickets for the show because it received rave reviews from all local sources. It was so successful that it even extended its run by two weeks. Read: You have two weeks to run out and see if for yourself here in Boston. Read reveiw excerpts and buy tickets here: http://www.speakeasystage.com/

When you consider the many tasty treats you can have at local restaurants and eateries near the Boston Center for the Arts, how can you resist? L. and I dreamed of a dark chocolate calzone at the Picco, but there was a menu change during our over-long absence. So we happily went out on a dessert limb and had the ice-cream cookie. So simple, yet so decadent. We gushed over the play while we shared our chocolate drenched delight. Powerful. Witty. The music--not even the lyrics--gave me goosebumps and made my body want to cry. Here is the synopsis:

Set in a small town in Louisiana in 1963, CAROLINE, OR CHANGE tells the powerful story of Caroline, a black maid working for a Southern Jewish family while struggling to raise her own children amidst the swirling social changes sweeping the country. At the heart of this beautiful musical is Caroline's relationship with the family's young son, Noah, who bonds with Caroline after the death of his mother. Everything changes for these friends, however, when Noah's stepmother decrees that Caroline can keep any change that Noah leaves in the pockets of his laundry. This decision ultimately sparks a confrontation that rips apart both households and mirrors the conflicts outside their doors.

Caroline, or Change left me with a fresh sense of the power of good writing and the joy that lingers from experiencing performance art. L. worked out how to shape a narrative he had been trying to puzzle out.

While the performers were very good, three cheers go out to the young Jacob Brandt, who played the part of Noah. Well done!

NPR Interview with Tony Kushner

New Yorker: John Lahr Discusses Kushner's work

NPR Interview with Kushner
(discussing his co-authorship of Spielberg's movie, Munich)

Free Books! Gutenberg Project

I learned today about the Project Gutenberg, a 35-year-old nonprofit based in Illinois. They have a mission to "break down the walls of ignorance and illiteracy." To aid in this fight they are launching an effort to make thousands of classic books available for free in downloadable form.

Volunteers began typing and scanning books into a database thirty-five years ago, decades before the Internet and the ability to distribute texts electronically became a reality. Now those efforts are bearing fruit as the project plans to host the World eBook Fair. Between July 4 and August 4 over 300,000 books will be available for free download. The fair will be repeated annually.

The majority of books are no longer protected by copyright. For a small percentage of the books, copyright permission was granted for their inclusion. There will even be a limited number of classical music files as well.

Free books. This enterprise is legal. And my Dad always said there was no such thing as a free lunch. Just think: schools could download copies of The Odyssey for free!

For more information read
the Boston Globe's article by David Mehegan:
Free chapter added to saga of e-books

Download free books (to your laptop, ipod, etc.) at the World eBook Fair: http://worldebookfair.com/

Learn about Project Gutenberg AND download free books now:
http://www.gutenberg.org/
(about 20,000 titles ready for download)

Curtis Sittenfeld: Prep and The Man of My Dreams

This evening I attended a reading by Curtis Sittenfeld. Her first novel, Prep, was a runaway best seller and was chosen by the New York Times as one of the top ten novels of 2005. (See the link in the sidebar.) The narrator, Lee, in Prep is an angst riddled teen who convinces her parents to let her move out of South Bend to attend a boarding school out East. Being from South Bend (sort of), I was attracted to the story line. The novel was smart and just dark enough for my tastes to make it stand out from a crowd of novels with young female characters.

I was also attracted to Sittenfeld as an author. She was teaching ninth grade English at a private high school for boys at the time the novel reached publication. After the novel hit the charts, I read one (or two?) essays by her describing her experience writing, getting published, and being marketed. She seemed smart and witty, but not in a snarky way. She was articulate and insightful.

Tonight she read from her latest novel, Man of My Dreams. The narrator is also a young woman, Hannah, but Sittenfeld insists that she is quite distinct from Lee. Lee's story was told during her high school years. Hannah's story spans fourteen years and she gets to mature into her late twenties. Lee said not-so-nice things because she was filled with bile. Hannah also gets verbally callous, but her roughness comes more from naiveté instead of nastiness. These are Sittenfeld's descriptions, as I have yet to read her new work.

Sittenfeld is tall. Tonight she wore black slacks paired with a black v-necked top. Her shoes: black. She looked cool. She looked like she writes: forthright, natural, and comfortable. Hhhhmmm...not sure those are the best adjectives. Alas. Or perhaps I should avoid any connection whatsoever between her writing style and her fashion style?

Sittenfeld shared with us her pleasure to be a guest author of Brookline Booksmith, where she used to shop when she lived nearby seven years ago. After a few opening remarks, she read several pages from the new book, and then took questions.

One person asked her about her readership: men, women, girls? Sittenfeld receives letters from readers of every ilk, but she surmised that many of her readers are women. She laughingly remarked that her audience consists of her family, her high school advisor, and a few strangers. Sure enough, she took questions from "Aunt Nancy" and "Aunt Sue."

The reading was held at the Coolridge Corner Theater, where sounds from surrounding theaters occassionly provided a soundtrack for the reading. After the Q & A we were all invited to the book store for a signing. This time I decided to pass. Not sure why. I suppose that the reality of packing all my books for the move back to South Bend is growing more present in my mind. I have accrued boxes of books already. My copy of Prep is back in South Bend and I wasn't quite ready to buy her latest. I will keep it in mind, however, as a future read.

Useful Links

Curtis Sittenfeld Official Website

May 22nd Time Article by Lev Grossman
Prepping for Love:
With The Man of My Dreams, novelist Curtis Sittenfeld
puts the literature back in chick lit.