Raymond Chandler: Hard-boiled
Charles Bukowski: Scrambled
Lewis Carroll: Over-easy
Truman Capote: Coddled
Walker Percy: In a Ramos Gin Fizz
Gustave Flaubert: Souffle
Henry Miller: Raw
A.A. Milne: Baked custard (pictured above, with not enough nutmeg on top)
Ernest Hemingway: Poached
Philip Roth: Served with liver
NOTE: I'm taking a summer break from writer interviews and am just going to have FUN with this blog for a month or so.
“Where memoirists often get stuck is finding their own dramatic action. The situation felt incredibly dramatic while we were in it, because we were navigating the hundred small actions it took to get through every day. But in retrospect, what do they all add up to?”
“If you’re a writer who’s about to publish a book, whatever is being spent on publicity doesn’t mean that you don’t have to get involved as well. Authors are asked to find people to blurb their books prior to release; they’re asked to reach out to people who will be willing to review the books; they’re asked to maintain their websites and Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. The difference between being published with a “Big 5” publisher versus a small or independent press is not necessarily how much work the writers have to do, but how much that work gets noticed.”
…2:00 PM, Capitol Hill Books: While still enjoying the capitol part of the Capitol city, head to this charming and rambling used bookstore. You can get lost in the stacks, but a knowledgeable bookseller will likely rescue you with good humor after you find yourself holding dozens of mysteries and wondering why you would ever leave this cozy place….
“…this country may be entering the richest and most productive literary period it yet has known. Generations of writers, it would appear, do not follow one another in regular chronological order, so many years to each generation. Instead they seem to follow a pattern of social upheaval, with all its soul-searching and questioning of life and people. The financial crash of 1929 was one such dividing line and the two world wars another. The travail they caused has conditioned the kind of writing that followed.”
“Anne had used her fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute of Independent Study (given at least partially to women on the basis of need) to build herself an outdoor swimming pool. This fact did not please the worthy ladies of Radcliffe! Nevertheless, that swimming pool gave Anne a great deal of pleasure, as well as the frequent presence of friends. At the first faintly warmish days of spring, Anne moved her visitors outside under the weak New England sunlight, sheaves of paper around us, books open to thrilling lines of poetry. It was cold, but we dove into the chilly water, pushing aside the dead leaves and new pollen that floated on the surface.“I remember swimming nude in the pool, looking at trees, and drinking Anne’s newest drink discovery, Champale, giggling over vague poetic jokes. Or drying off, sitting in the sun, reading each other’s poems. Maxine Kumin and her children would arrive. Maxine dove into the pool, cool, competent, and graceful. Anne, on Thorzine, would move a bit into the shade. The phone rang and was dragged outside. Anne’s children came home from school. The Dalamation dragged its puppies outside. Figures were commented on: hips and waists. I had a baby. Lois got her divorce. Maxine’s daughter entered Radcliffe. Anne’s children grew up. Poems were shared and magazines passed around. We wrote and wrote and read and read and revised and wrote. We read aloud to each other. Steam rose from the pool; the light grew thin; the leaves fell. And we swam until late October…”
It was commonly thought that Anne Sexton had rushed into print, experiencing no difficulty in getting published once her first brilliant poems had been created. This was untrue. In fact, Anne had tried to publish consistently for several years before the acceptance of her first manuscript. The first time I went to see her, she pulled out masses of rejection slips from her file drawers and waved them in front of me, laughing. She had two file cabinets full of magazine rejections. Some were printed rejection forms; others, nasty letters. It was somehow comforting to see her fling them about, to know that the struggle to publish was a common one and that everyone got rejected.Anne actually seemed to enjoy the process of sending out material. She had envelopes addressed to the magazines she favored, and when her poems came back in the mail, she immediately transferred them to new envelopes and sent them right out again. She insisted I do this too. She never condescended to me, or acted as if my poems were not worth being published. We were conspirators together against a harsh anti-poetic world, she seemed to imply. Our poems would prevail. “Don’t let the bastards get you!”She liked to read me her rejection mail. She’d have it out on her desk, ready to read, when I walked into her house for lunch. “Oh Kathy,” she would exclaim. “Listen to this!” She’d roll her eyes heavenward, recite the note dramatically, and then stuff it away in a file drawer, only to find another one to read. “You see,” she would say to me throatily, “You just have to keep trying.” Then she’d pause. “The bastards…,” she added. A dramatic sigh. She’d stub out her cigarette, light another, lean her head back, exhale. “Don’t let the bastards win, Kathy! Don’t ever forget it. Promise me.”