Favorite Books Bookshelf, July 31, 2018

I recently was forced to move masses of books off and then later back onto their shelves for a carpet cleaning project, and it occurred to me that it might be fun for me to create a record of the books that are on my hallowed FAVORITE BOOKS BOOKSHELF at this particular moment in time. The shelf is pretty packed, so the rule is that I can’t really add a book without subtracting one. The other rule is that I have to remind myself that some of these books may not be the “best” book ever, but that it’s on this shelf because it hit me at the exact right time, or the reading experience was extraordinary in some memorable way that enhanced the book, or, well, because I don’t really care that this isn’t the “best” book ever. Also, for sure, some actually ARE the “best” ever. Usually, I have a sort of feeling as I’m reading and finishing. If I have to ask myself if a book should go on this shelf, I know it shouldn’t.

A few words to remind everyone that I’ve been around about as long as a sequoia, and I’m sure this list reflects to some extent a reader coming of age during a certain time/place. So be it. That is who I am. And this is my secret place where I separate the art from the artist and try not to worry about writers who might be dicks in real life. Additionally, I try not to put books by friends in this area, because those books get their own special shelves. And I (mostly) resist including children’s books.

I’ll also say that I have shelves of other books that I absolutely love! But usually there’s a little something extra that makes me send a book to this shelf. I’m really loathe to remove (or even reread) books that have been here for a long, long, long time…so if you’re going to question me in a deep way about why a book is here, it’s quite possible that I may not be able to answer to your satisfaction or even coherently. Suffice to say that typing each of these titles, touching each of these covers as I unshelved and reshelved did so much more than spark joy, as Marie Kondo suggests: Each book reminded me of who I was, who I am, and how I got to here.

Oh, and for those of you worried that you’re not finding The Great Gatsby here--!!—it, and The Catcher in the Rye, are in with the writing books, due to their outsize influence on me and my writing life.

Presented alphabetically here, but PLEASE don’t think I have them alphabetized on the shelf? What, you think I’m crazy?!? (Also, forgive me for being too lazy to italicize titles.)

Abbott, Lee K.: Love Is the Crooked Thing

Ansay, A. Manette: Vinegar Hill

Austen, Jane: Pride & Prejudice

Baker, Nicholson: The Mezzanine

Black, Robin: If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This

Bodsworth, Fred: Last of the Curlews

Boswell, Tom: Why Time Begins on Opening Day

Bronson, Po: Bombardiers

Campbell, Bonnie Jo: Mother, Tell Your Daughters

Canin, Ethan: The Palace Thief

Capote, Truman: Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Cather, Willa: My Antonia

Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness

Didion, Joan: Play It as It Lays

Doerr, Harriet: Stones for Ibarra

Downham, Jenny: Before I Die

Eliot, T.S.: Collected Poems

Ellis, Bret Easton: Less Than Zero

Eugenides, Jeffrey: The Virgin Suicides

Ferris, Joshua: Then We Came to the End

Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Pat Hobby Stories

Ford, Richard: Independence Day

Frazier, Ian: The Great Plains

Fried, Seth: “Frost Mountain Picnic Massacre,” One Story magazine

Gilchrist, Ellen: Victory Over Japan

Hamper, Ben: Rivethead

Hemingway, Ernest: A Moveable Feast

Hemingway, Ernest: In Our Time

Hemingway, Ernest: The Sun Also Rises

Hemingway, Ernest: Winner Take Nothing

Hempel, Amy: Reasons to Live

Ishiguro, Kazuo: The Remains of the Day

Jong, Erica: Fear of Flying

Krakauer, Jon: Into Thin Air

LaChapelle, Mary: House of Heroes

LeCarre, John: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird

Lowell, Susan: Ganado Red

MacLean, Norma: A River Runs through It

McCarthy, Cormac: All the Pretty Horses

McEwan, Ian: Atonement

McInerney, Jay: Bright Lights, Big City

McKinght, Reginald: The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas

Melville, Herman: Moby-Dick

Minot, Susan: Monkeys

O’Connor, Flannery: The Complete Stories

Plimpton, George: Open Net

Porter, Katherine Anne: Pale Horse, Pale Rider

Richard, Mark: The Ice at the Bottom of the World

Salinger, J.D.: Nine Stories

Shipstead, Maggie: “Astonish Me,” One Story magazine

Shriver, Lionel: We Need to Talk about Kevin

Simpson, Eileen: Poets in their Youth

Smith, Patti: Just Kids

Stafford, Jean: The Mountain Lion

Strand, Mark: The Continuous Life

Swarthout, Glendon: The Homesman

Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina

Townsend, Sue: The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole

Townsend, Sue: The Secret Life of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾

Updike, John: Pigeon Feathers

Wakefield, Dan: New York in the 50s

White, E.B.: Stuart Little

Whitman, Walt: Leaves of Grass

Wolfe, Tom: The Bonfire of the Vanities

Woodrell, Daniel: Winter’s Bone

Yates, Richard: Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

Taking on Mighty Themes: A Conversation with Andi Cumbo-Floyd

by Carollyne Hutter

Herman Melville said: “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.” In her young adult novel Steele Secrets, Andi Cumbo-Floyd takes on the mighty themes of slavery and racism. Steele Secrets tells the story of a 16-year-old girl named Mary Steele, who meets the ghost of a slave named Moses. As she gets to know Moses—and battles with her community to save this cemetery—Mary learns some secrets about her own past that make her question her own stories and the stories of her small town.

Andi, this is your first young adult novel. What drew you to this genre and age group?

What a good question, and I’m not sure I have a great answer.  I typically write creative nonfiction for adults, so I’m well-versed in the tools of fiction—plot, character development, scene-work—but I’ve always found myself fascinated by what has actually happened. 

This time, though, I wanted to try to weave together a lot of stories—stories based on actual events I’d witnessed—and the best way to do that seemed to be through fiction.

As for writing for young adults, I honestly think that came from Mary, the protagonist. From the get-go, I knew she was the center part of this story, and since she was a teenager, it seemed obvious that the book needed to be written with teenagers in mind. That said, I didn’t really set out to write a book for young adults, but in our culture, we label things—if it’s a book about women, it’s women’s literature. If it’s a book about African Americans, it’s African American literature.  So a book about teenagers becomes young adult literature.  I don’t know if I love that labeling, but I sure do love Mary Steele.

What challenges did you face writing for teens?

Well, it’s been a while since I was a teenager . . . a couple of years ago – so I did struggle with some of the pop culture stuff.  For example, I don’t even know what Snapchat is. . . so I had to just own my strengths and make Mary a little out of step with her classmates.  Hence the Johnny Depp and Veronica Mars references. 

Also, it’s hard to push away what I know now about slavery. One astute early reader pointed out that my voice shifts from being a teenage voice to being an adult one when I talk about what I didn’t know about slavery.  That’s why I wrote the book in past tense, using Mary’s more mature voice to look back on this time in her life. 

Your book takes on the mighty themes of slavery and racism. Why did you pick those themes?

I feel too grandiose saying that these themes are my calling, but they kind of are.  My deepest passion is the recovery of the stories of enslaved people and my work to help heal the wounds rooted in slavery, i.e., racism.  I am a southern woman, born and raised in North Carolina and Virginia, and I was raised on a slave plantation in Virginia from the age of 14.  So the history of slavery is everywhere I go, and some of the places that are most dear to me were built by enslaved workers—the home that my dad still occupies and my farm now. 

But for the early years of my life, slavery was amorphous—written in numbers and as a small shadow cast behind the great nostalgia that is southern identity.  It wasn’t until college—and then in my 20s when I worked for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project—that I realized that this was not history—i.e., something that lived only in the past.  In those years, I learned what my education and southern culture had—through intention and apathy—left unsaid—that the legacy of slavery was long and very much alive.

So now, I take as my work the effort to recover the stories of enslaved people because I believe if we look honestly at slavery, if we gazed into the eyes of people who lived under it and sometimes succumbed to it and often persevered through it, we can find healing as a country and as individuals.

This book has a lot of details and information on slavery. What type of research did you do for the book?

For the past five years, my research interest has been primarily the experience of enslavement in Virginia. In particular, I have dedicated myself to archival work to locate the names and as many facts as possible about the people who were enslaved at the plantation where I was raised and at other plantations in the area where I now live.  I’ve also done a lot of genealogical research about these individuals and their families, so the genealogical aspect of this work comes from my experience of research—and from my own family’s story. 

I loved the setting for the book. Is the town a real town or based on a real town?

Terra Linda is a fictional place, and I want that to be clear: I don’t know any towns in Virginia where the White Citizens Councils take this kind of action (although I’m sure many towns here do have active white supremacists groups).  But I took the landscape and the geography for Terra Linda from the beautiful town of Buena Vista, Virginia, the place where my father-in-law was raised and my husband spent his childhood.  In fact, the idea for the book came to me when we visited Neriah Baptist Church there in Buena Vista and my father-in-law told me about the time he saw a ghost in a graveyard near his childhood home.

I was sad when the book ended because I wanted to spend more time with Mary Steele. Any thoughts on a sequel?

A few people have asked me that, and honestly, I’m not sure.  I, too, love Mary, so maybe she’ll have some more adventures of this nature sometime.  We’ll see. . .

You’re a writer, editor, and farmer. How do you balance these different demands?

You know, it’s actually really hard in some ways—mostly in terms of time and money—but it’s absolutely rewarding in every other way.  Writing and farming are pretty symbiotic occupations because they both require, for me at least, a weddedness to a place and an openness of space.  Editing—the way I help to pay our bills—is something that I am constantly adjusting in terms of balance because I often let it creep into my writing time. Also, because I read all day for work, I sometimes don’t read for pleasure, which can hinder my writing.  So all that’s to say, it’s a constant struggle to get balance, and balance looks differently here on the farm in different seasons.  When spring comes, my focus shifts to vegetable farming and less away from editing. . . but then I find that I write more in the summer, maybe because I’m not focusing so much on other people’s words.  Still, despite the struggle, I wouldn’t trade a bit of this wordy, animal-filled life for anything in the world.

Andi Cumbo-Floyd is a writer, editor, and farmer who lives at the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains with her husband, 4 dogs, 4 cats, 6 goats, and 22 chickens.  Her books are Steele Secrets, Writing Day In and Day Out, The Slaves Have Names, and God’s Whisper Manifesto.  When she’s not gathering eggs or pulling weeds, she writes over at andilit.com, and she’d love to connect with you there.  A free chapter of Steele Secrets as well as all the ordering options for the book are available at andilit.com/steele-secrets. 

Carollyne Hutter, www.HutterWriter.com, enjoys writing for children and adults. Often her work focuses on environmental, scientific, health, and international development issues.

Link Corral: Moby-Dick; New Review of My Book; Free Journal

I thought this was an amusing report from attending a marathon reading of Moby-Dick:

...The inaugural event occurred in 2012 and took place in three independent bookstores over the course of three days. There are other readings across the country, as the New York Times noted, “with bearded, bespectacled acolytes flocking to seaside ports, sipping from thermoses of grog and readjusting their sweaters at the podium,” but this event was New York City’s first. This year, the event was compacted into two days and delivered before Frank Stella’s Melville-inspired sculptures. At this point, I think it is important to note the origins of the word “marathon”: a feat of endurance that resulted in immediate death….

Read the rest: http://lithub.com/trapped-at-a-moby-dick-marathon/

*****

Here’s a nice review of THIS ANGEL ON MY CHEST on BookBrowse…and it was selected as the Editor’s Choice! Because the review is posted for non-subscribers only for a week, I’m going to cheat and include the entire text here:

Exploring the many facets of grief through fiction in a variety of formats and voices, This Angel on My Chest deserves a wide audience.

Leslie Pietrzyk draws on her own experiences in This Angel on My Chest, a collection of loosely connected short stories, each of which features a young widow. Pietrzyk, whose husband died of a heart attack at the age of 37, deftly explores the various aspects of grief she endured following the tragedy, some aspects of which continue to affect her more than a decade later.

The book is fictional, but the author has said that she made a point of including at least "one hard, true thing" in each story, tiny details that would never occur to someone who hasn't gone through a deep loss. For example, in one of the stories she talks about her husband's love for malted milk balls – and regret after his death that she more frequently bought peanut M&Ms because they were her favorite. So while the tales feature different women in different circumstances, each has an underlying ring of truth that blurs the line between fact and fiction. In some of the stories Pietrzyk does seem to talk directly to her husband but whether it's the fictional spouse lost by the character or the real-life equivalent the author lost, it's impossible to tell.

Unsurprisingly This Angel on My Chest is very touching but the feelings expressed aren't limited to sorrow. They instead cycle through a whole gamut of emotions such as anger, fear, confusion and depression. The book is outward looking too, exploring characters' reactions to their husbands' deaths and the responses of those around the women, rather than depicting any of them as objects of pity.

It made me more appreciative of the people in my life, and also caused me to pause and wonder what I'd miss about them should they predecease me, things that I take for granted now. While I choked up a bit from time to time, I generally didn't find the book overly sad or depressing. I was instead primarily impressed by the author's ability to completely capture her subject so perfectly. I've been lucky and haven't known this level of loss in my life, but Pietrzyk's writing went a long way toward helping me understand what she and others have experienced.

The author confines most of her stories to grief and the mourning process, only making her way to healing toward the end of the collection as she seems to apologize to her late husband for moving on. Given the fact that some healing seems to have occurred in her life — she has remarried — I found it interesting that she chose to limit her stories to the death of a spouse and its immediate aftereffects. But even with this limited scope, the book doesn't become dull or keep hammering on a single subject. The variety of voices, formats and emotions is rather remarkable and keeps the collection entertaining as perspectives shift from one account to the next. She moves beyond the standard short story form by including elements such as a multiple-choice quiz and a list of foods mentioned throughout the book. Neither of these formats sounds particularly remarkable; what, you may ask yourself, is so exciting about a list? Yet somehow the author turns chapters such as these into some of the most moving and memorable parts of the book.

Sometimes Pietrzyk's use of perspective is confusing. In some of the stories she uses "you," and I found myself re-reading to determine if "you" was the narrator referring to herself (as in, "you have to ask yourself if…") or if "you" was the narrator talking to her absent spouse ("you once said…"). The same uncertainty occurred over the use of "she" referring to an unnamed character in a chapter that focused on more than one woman. Careful reading of these sections, though, will certainly help avoid the disorientation I occasionally felt, and the overall quality of Pietrzyk's writing makes any struggle through these passages well worth the effort.

This Angel on My Chest is excellent from start to finish, and deserves a wide audience. Readers who can get beyond their knee-jerk aversion to the subject will find a real gem here.

Here’s the link, for more information: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/3321/this-angel-on-my-chest

*****

I’m very pleased that one of my stories is appearing in the new issue of The Greensboro Review. “Easy Love” is one of the stories I had to cut from THIS ANGEL ON MY CHEST so I’m happy it found a happy home. Here’s the opening:

            Sunday was Emma’s birthday.  It was also my birthday, and, unfortunately, Dan’s birthday, too.  What were the chances of an entire family having a birthday on the same day?  “We’re just crazy-lucky like that,” Emma used to tell people.

            This year, Emma would turn thirteen, I was going to be forty-three, and Dan—my husband, Emma’s dad—had died last April, so he would be forty-five forever.

            In the weeks leading up to the “big day,” Emma claimed desperately one moment that she had to have a party and claimed the next that all parties were “annoying” and “stupid” and that she wouldn’t sit through one unless I gave her a thousand dollars.  I longed to spend the day distracted by a chaotic sleepover or shepherding a herd of girls through an afternoon of disco bowling, but the final word was absolutely not, no “pathetic” birthday party for her.

            “Are you sure?” I said.  “I think maybe we should do something.”

            “No party,” she said.  “No special dinner.  No nothing.  Just no.”  She was hunkered down into the big leather couch, and I perched on the edge, watching the Caps’ hockey game.  Emma wore the lucky “Rock the Red” T-shirt Dan gave her during last year’s play-off run.  Dan had been a hockey fan, had played goalie in college, and while I could follow the action, I couldn’t care about the outcome the way he and Emma did.  Win, lose, tie: there was another game soon enough, another season, a different team to root for if yours wasn’t any good this year.  Not that I shared these scandalous thoughts. …

Unfortunately, the story isn’t online, but I have an extra copy of the journal…send me an email with your mailing address if you would like to read it. I’ll select one person at random on Wednesday evening. Here’s my email: lesliepietrzyk@gmail.com Please put GREENSBORO REVIEW in the header, so I can keep my inbox organized!

Books, Books, and More Books: Shelf-Awareness Column

Everyone loves a list, and today I'm featured on Shelf-Awareness with a list of some of my favorite books and bookish opinions, including this, which will be familiar to long-time blog readers who lived the Moby-Dick experience with me:

Book you most want to read again for the first time: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. I read it later in life, having studiously avoided college classes where it might be required, and I devoted a summer to the project, self-shamed into tackling the Great American Novel. I read as a reader, savoring the prose and not worrying about footnotes and English department interpretations, and I often found my way to the pages at four in the morning thanks to a bout of insomnia, startled to find myself immersed in a postmodern book written before modernism was a twinkle in anyone's eye. I cried when I reached the end as Labor Day loomed, and honestly considered starting the whole thing over again right then. It remains the most majestic and perfect reading experience of my life.

Read the rest: http://shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=2603#m29957

My Summer Reading

What are you reading this summer? I love talking about books, so I was pleased to be invited to share my summer reading ideas with The Washington Independent Review of Books. The only trick was trying to cram as many book titles as possible into one list!

I often assign myself “projects” in my summer reading — one summer was spent delightfully immersed in Moby-Dick, reading it for the first time after a life of studiously avoiding it; another summer, I appreciated The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, thanks to a more leisurely reading pace than the first go-around for English class. I’m taking a different tack with this summer’s “project” by catching up on some buzzed-about contemporary books that sound compelling and, perhaps, will prove as enduring as a “project” book should be. 

Read on:

http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/features/bedtime-stories-july-2015

10 Classic Works You MUST Read (IMHO)

Okay, last week was true confessions for me: the Important Works I had not read that I should read. (In case you’re wondering, both The Road and Beloved have many vocal fans…okay, Faulkner and Shakespeare, too. In fact, someone spoke up about each of my neglected books, adding to my guilt.)

To show that I’m not a dolt, here is my list of classic books that I have read that I feel immense passion for, that affected me deeply and profoundly, that I can’t imagine my life being the same without.  All in my humble opinion, of course.  And I think I’ll stick to pre-WWIish or so, though I may fudge a little bit.

1.  Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. I had purposefully skipped this one during college/grad school, afraid of TMI about whales, and yet that’s one of the many things I loved most the summer I spent reading it, whales and obsession and the post-modern tricks that were so post-modern that Melville used them even before modernity. One of the greatest books, ever.  There’s probably a reason that this book came to mind first.

2.  “The Wasteland” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot. Yes, I’m already breaking my pre-WWI rule—even though Eliot said, “It's not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them.” I read “The Wasteland,” unsupervised, in a terrible American lit high school class where the teacher gave us a list of Great Writers and we picked through them independently through the semester while he read magazines at his desk, and I had no idea what was going on here, but I thought it was something important.  When I got to college, I saw how right I was.  I have a recording of Eliot reading “The Wasteland” that I often listen to when I fall asleep, and I feel that the words are imprinted on my soul. (Yes, yes, some people call this recording “melodramatic,” but I happen to love it.)  Okay, throw in “The Hollow Men,” too, which even my high school brain could figure out.

3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Does the inclusion of this book really need any explanation?  I came to it for the romance in my early teens and read it now for the wicked humor and its dark reality of the Way Things Are (I mean, Were, because surely women’s lives are lived in a perfectly fair world now).

4.  The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. I read this first my freshman year of college and have a little notebook from the time with handwritten “Important Quotations” that is filled with lines from this book.  When I reread it a couple of summers ago, I saw why:  what a psychological study, what a depth of mind—examined, and examining.  What frustrating sorrow. What an achievement.

5.  “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman. Another one that passed quickly through my head in that terrible high school lit class, then caught me in college, but was a deep and true revelation one perfect summer afternoon, read out loud while lying in a hammock under a tree.

6.  The Adventures of Huck Finn by Mark Twain.  Why do they let kids read this book? I loved Tom Sawyer and couldn’t wait for this “sequel” when I was ten.  Oops.  Reading it as an adult was, ahem, a little bit of a different experience.  I’m not sure it’s possible to understand American without reading this book.

7.  Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.  The landscape, the passion, the wails across the moors, the story of a story, the passion, the passion.  Let’s not forget that people are always people first, even back in the olden days when everyone was wearing all that buttoned-up, stiff clothing, sitting around parlors drinking tea.

8. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.  I read this for class at least three times in college, and it wasn’t until the last time that I sunk into its depths.  Or, rather, its depths sunk into me.  I think it makes for a great sequence to read Heart of Darkness, then watch “Apocalypse Now,” then reread Heart of Darkness then watch “Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse,” about the making of the movie.  Then reread Heart of Darkness.

9.  “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold.  Well…I hope the kids still read this in their survey courses (if that’s what they’re called), but I’m not sure it’s still considered the must-read it was back when I was in college.  But what a potent message for the impressionable young writer, especially one who lived in a dorm room overlooking a lake, listening to the waves each night?

10.  Toss-up:  Anna Karenina, Middlemarch, Thomas Hardy, Ibsen, Chekhov!  All works that were influential enough on me to make this list—yet none feels 100 percent deserving of its own entry the way the others do.  Yet I ache at the thought of excluding any of them.  Remember what Eliot said about rules?

11.  I’m not sure Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is this type of classic, but I don’t think anyone can really understand women without reading this book.  (Watching “Sex in the City” is NOT a substitute!)  I still can’t forgive Amy for burning Jo’s manuscript, and it still annoys me that Jo was able to!

I know there are many, many books I haven’t included and might if I wrote this list on a different day.  I know that I cheated with some on the WWI cut-off and not on others that would make this list with an expanded or different timeline.  I know I’m supposed to have Shakespeare on this list or Homer.  I know my list reflects my American background and schooling.  But there is something bracing about winnowing, about pushing to think which books go on the shortest possible list, which classic books changed my life profoundly, making me who I am, which books would be the absolute last I would toss into the fire.

"Moby-Dick" Opera to Come to Kennedy Center!

I’m absurdly excited that the Washington National Opera will be putting on a production of Jake Heggie’s “Moby-Dick” next year at the Kennedy Center!  By no means am I any kind of opera expert or super-fan, but I’ve always been enthralled by every opera I’ve ever seen; it’s perhaps the only art form where I become so utterly immersed that the irritating armrest-fighter next to me and the germy cougher across the aisle both melt away, leaving only me and the performance.

“Moby-Dick” is a natural for an operatic production, of course:  a epic story with larger than life characters, life and death, man vs. nature, tragedy, whales thrashing about, and a peg-leg!  The only thing missing as far as I can tell is, um, a soprano!  The cast photo shows one woman…not sure who she’ll turn out to be, but I’m looking forward to finding out.  (Research shows that she plays the cabin boy.)

Here’s the link for more info, though individual tickets aren’t available yet (go ahead…subscribe to the whole season!).

Here’s a Washington Post review of the original production in Dallas.  Anne Midgette writes:

“Moby-Dick,” though not perfect, turned out to be one of the most satisfying new operas I’ve seen premiered. And while new work is often seen by audiences as more a duty than a pleasure, the opening-night crowd in Dallas broke into spontaneous applause three times during the first half, and screamed and yelled its approval at the curtain calls. It was a wonderful and rare reminder that new opera truly can excite people if it’s done right.

 

While I don’t usually read paragraphs marked “spoiler alert”—I did in this Post article, assuming I know the end of the book so what could be spoiled?—but…I didn’t know the end of this opera; and when I read the ending, I got chills down my spine immediately.  I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS OPERA!!!

Moby-Dick and Me: Classes at Politics & Prose (no, I'm not the one teaching M-D)

Oh, how I love the continued and coincidental reappearance of Moby-Dick in my life this week, though admittedly this new example is a rather weak connection.  Nevertheless, here it is: 

1.  Politics & Prose Bookstore is offering an excellent line-up of classes this winter and spring.

2.  One of the classes is about Moby-Dick.

3.  One of the classes is taught by me!  (Oh, it's all so eerie that I’m getting goosebumps!!)

Here are the details on my class:

Right Brain Writing: Guided Prompts
Leslie Pietrzyk
Date: January 28
1:00 - 3:30 p.m.
Register now for this class
Explore your creative side during this afternoon of guided writing exercises designed to get your subconscious flowing. No writing experience necessary! This is a great class for beginners and also for those fiction writers and/or memoirists with more experience who might be stuck in their current projects, looking for a jolt of inspiration. The goal is to have fun in a supportive, nurturing environment and to go home with several promising pieces to work on further. We will be using as our inspiration work from Speed Enforced by Aircraft, a book of poetry by local author Richard Peabody.

And here are the details about Moby-Dick:

Moby-Dick
Joseph Fruscione
Five Thursdays (every other week): January 24, February 7, February 21, March 7, March 21,
1:00 - 3:00 p.m.Register now for this class
"Call me Ishmael"--perhaps the most famous opening line in American literature. For this winter 2013 course, we'll read the rich, powerful, and complex novel that follows this memorable opening line. We'll learn what Ahab means when he says "I'd strike the sun if it insulted me," or why the cook Fleece “preaches” to sharks, or why Ishmael catalogs the different types of whales so thoroughly (and obsessively). Over our five class sessions, we'll discuss the many layers and nuances of Melville's novel: Ahab's revenge quest, Ishmael's geographical and metaphysical journey, the scientific and technical material about whales and whaling, the darker elements of Ahab's sense of self, and much more. We'll also learn the how and why of Melville's wonderfully named characters: Starbuck, Stubb, Flask, Queequeg, Daggoo, Tashtego, Pip, Fedallah, Father Mapple, Captains Peleg and Bildad, and others.

*****

But, seriously, check the whole list.  There are classes about Yeats, and Arthurian legends, and Seamus Heaney, and Downton Abbey, and writing picture books, and ladies detective fiction, and a class about beginnings taught by Ann Hood, and EVEN MORE!  Info found here.

A Convergence: Moby-Dick + A Portrait of a Lady Link Corral

In the past couple of summers, I’ve assigned myself a Big Book to read, first Moby-Dick, and the next year The Portrait of a Lady.  I was too distracted by Laura Ingalls Wilder this past summer to keep up the tradition, so I’m not sure if it’s a habit yet or just an anomaly.  Anyway, I digress. 

Within two days, I came across interesting news about both of these Big Books:

Moby-Dick

From the Powell’s bookstore website:

“Powell's Books has collaborated with Rogue Ales and Spirits to create a beverage for anyone who has a thirst for books and artisan craft beer — White Whale Ale, infused with the seafaring spirit of Moby-Dick. The concept behind the project was to go where beer has never gone before — by adding actual pages from a copy of Moby-Dick to the brew.”

 

You can order this craft beer from Rogue Ales.

The Portrait of a Lady

From the Washington Post review of Michael Gorra’s Portrait of a Novel, a book about the creation of The Portrait of a Lady:

“Gorra demonstrates that James was interested less in plot than in character, and specifically in consciousness. “The novel isn’t finally about a young woman’s choice of a husband, or even about Americans in Europe,” Gorra writes. “It is instead a drama of the perceiving mind.” James hoped this sort of intellectual drama would be as “interesting,” he wrote in his 1908 preface, “as the surprise of a caravan or the identification of a pirate,” the stuff of commercial fiction. Gorra underlines how radically James broke from the fiction practices of the 19th century in this novel. Not only did he shift the emphasis from plot to character, but he introduced into fiction one of the earliest examples of “stream of consciousness” (his older brother William’s phrase), and he dared to leave his ending unresolved, to the frustration of many readers.”

 

Read on.

Work in Progress: Let's Keep It Short

If you read this blog with any regularity or know me, you may have noticed that I spend a great deal of time bemoaning the fact that I seem to be incapable of writing any stories that are truly “short.”  Twenty pages feels “short” to me, whereas twenty pages feels “long” to many literary journal editors, especially those who think, “Do we like this story more than the twenty poems by twenty different poets we could publish instead?”

Indeed, a current work-in-progress is already spiraling way out of control (though I confess that starting out with a plan of six separate sections may not be a way to ensure success in keeping things trim).

But today I discovered the secret to writing shorter, and it’s so simple that I have to laugh at myself:

Write by hand.

You know, on real, live paper, preferably smallish pieces of paper, like journal-size, so that you start to mentally freak out when you’re on page twenty, which would really only be about page 5 of something typed into a computer.  When you freak out at this point, after 20 smallish pieces of paper, you quickly find ways to wind things up.  Plus, at that point, your hand is very tired, so you also are motivated to wind things up.  “Wind things up”:  is there any lovelier phrase to those ensnared by the verbose?

Yes, I know that Charles Dickens also wrote by hand, though I have no idea what size his paper was, and nevertheless, he managed to produce some doorstops.  Tolstoy.  Melville.  Etc.  Still, I suspect their hands were made of sterner stuff than mine, and since I’m terribly wimpy about pain, I really think I’ve found the solution. 

And now…time to wind this up.  Happy Friday!

Residency: Day I-Have-No-Idea

Yesterday was dubbed The Day of Me.  I was the one who dubbed it this, of course, because in a scheduling glitch, I gave my craft lecture in the morning and then gave my reading at night. So, a long, somewhat nerve-wracking day…but as far as a Day of Me goes, I couldn’t ask for anything better.

My craft lecture was about creating characters who are alive, and Rick Mulkey, our fearless Converse leader, got to offer his rendition of the famous “It’s Alive!” scene from the 1931 movie, Frankenstein, and I got to read passages from some of my favorite fiction:  Moby-Dick, The Catcher in the Rye, We Need to Talk About Kevin, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” and (of course) The Great Gatsby.

I’m always nervous to read brand-new work, but my rant-ish story about female aging went well and was beautifully enhanced by my reading partner, visiting guest Keith Lee Morris, who read from his new collection of stories Call It What You Want a hilarious story about male midlife crisis.  The unplanned she said-he said effect was perfect!

And then the poker game.

I sat in just to show a woman could sit in on a poker game, the only one brave (or stupid) enough to do so…and immediately won two very large hands.  (Might I add that I was playing with men who brought their own cards and chips, who spoke a language I didn’t understand (high-low stud, iron cross, guts poker), and even one who was a professional ball player, savvy from years of card games on team buses and locker rooms.)  I quit while I was ahead—entrusting my chips to a trustworthy student, who managed not to lose the entire pot over the next several hours, which is surely more than I would have accomplished had I stayed in the game.

And, to cap the Day of Me, the Stanford-OK game was a thriller.  I was rooting for Stanford, but alas…the game spilled beyond midnight, beyond the Day of Me, and consequently, Stanford lost.  Such is my power on the Day of Me….

Stories by Ron Rash & Julia Glass

Thank you, Washington Post Magazine, for going against all conventional wisdom and publishing short stories a couple of times a year.  Sunday’s issue featured stories by Ron Rash, Yiyun Li, and Julia Glass.  I especially recommend Rash’s and Glass’s stories:

Ron Rash’s “26 Days” is about a married couple anxiously waiting for their daughter to return home from her overseas deployment, and this topical story is never far from class issues.  It’s taut, well-observed, and the author shows his generous heart.

“I walk out of Cromer Hall and into a November day warmer and sunnier than you usually get in these mountains. The clock tower bell rings. In my mind I move the heavy metal hands ahead to 8:30 p.m. Kerrie has already finished supper and is getting ready to go to sleep. Over at the ATM, students pull out bank cards like winning lottery tickets. I wonder if there’s a single student here because of the Army college fund. The nice cars and SUVs, like the tuition, argue it unlikely. Probably not one of them ever thinks that, while they’re sitting in a classroom or watching a basketball game, kids their own age are getting blown up by IEDs. I think again about how we wouldn’t be in Iraq if there was still a draft. You can bet it’d be a lot different if everyone’s kids could end up over there. Just a bunch of stupid hillbillies fighting a stupid war, that’s what some jerk on TV said, making a joke of it. There are times I want to grab a student by the collar and tell them how good they got it. Other times I tell myself I’ve given Kerrie more than my parents gave me. But I also think how if I’d had more ambition years back and gotten a welding certificate or a two-year degree at Tech, maybe Kerrie wouldn’t be in Iraq.”

Read on.

Julia Glass’s “Attainable Felicity” takes place in a whaling museum in New Bedford, Connecticut, during the annual read-a-thon of Moby-Dick (so how could I not love this story?).  A mother and her son struggle—quietly—with the pain of loss and survival.  It’s a sneaky story, with a wallop of an ending.

“A man in a plaid shirt with a shaggy, ashen beard is reading about one more high-seas encounter between the Pequod and another ship. He looks as if he’s taking a break from splitting wood. He reads well enough until he gets to the dialogue between the sailors, which he performs in ludicrous accents. His misplaced conceit is embarrassing.

“Lucinda chides herself for being so judgmental. She doesn’t go for confession too much anymore; if she did, she’d already be composing her recitation for Father Jess. She’d have to confess, as well, her inability to feel thoroughly proud of Jonathan and the life he’s made. He and Cyril are professors at Berkeley: Jonathan in gender studies, Cyril in American literature. (Jonathan’s “Sexual Identity in Firstborn Children” and Cyril’s “The Fine Hammered Steel of Woe: Ecclesiastes and Melville’s Ambivalent Soul” sit on her bedside table, beneath other books she is far more likely to read.) They were married the previous summer. At 50, Jonathan is almost 10 years older than Cyril. When Lucinda found herself giving advice about the wedding, what disoriented her was not that her son would be marrying a man but that, after so many years alone, he would be settling down in any conventional sense.”

Read on.

Moby-Dick in the News

Thar she blows…Nathaniel Philbrick has a new book out called Why Read Moby-Dick?, and I’m immediately putting it on my list.  He’s the author of In the Heart of the Sea:  The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, which is an amazing true tale about the sinking of a whaling ship, the basis for Moby-Dick is based on.

So here are some excellent Moby-Dick related links:

From NPR, a discussion with Philbrick about his new book:  “As he tells Robert Siegel, he thinks you should read it not only because "the level of the language is like no other," but because "it's as close to being our American Bible as we have." “ (Read on.)

And from the New York Times, this display of Moby-Dick book covers from various eras and countries (what’s up with the cover showing guys standing on the steps?):

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/10/22/books/review/moby-dick-slideshow.html

The New York Times review of Philbrick’s book:  “His voice is that of a beloved professor lecturing with such infectious enthusiasm that one can almost, for a moment, believe in the possibility of a popular renaissance for Melville.”  (Read on.)

Here’s the book trailer, which includes some lovely scenery of Nantucket:  http://youtu.be/I-Pz7YtJCco

 (sorry--I don't know why this video isn't showing up directly...grr.)

Moby-Dick on the Small Screen

You may remember that my summer reading project last year was Melville’s Moby-Dick (which I LOVED, of course). Tonight, the Encore network is showing a new, two-part movie based on the book.  I would be dubious—since I’m not sure I’ve ever watched anything on Encore before—but Hank Stuever, the excellent and tough T.V. critic of The Washington Post liked it.  William Hurt and Ethan Hawke play Ahab and Starbuck.

"So is this a good “Moby Dick” or a really cheesy “Moby Dick”? I happen to think it’s a great “Moby Dick.” Better than John Huston’s “Moby Dick”? Well, no. And yes. (And definitely better than the Patrick Stewart TV movie more than a decade ago.)

"This is the “Moby Dick” for fans of the 2003 film “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World”; it’s also the “Moby Dick” for those of us who think Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” is the best version of “Moby Dick.” This version — bloodier, action-packed — was financed by German producers and filmed mostly at sea, in late 2009, off the coast of Malta, on a meticulous replica of a 19th-century whaling vessel, Ahab’s legendary Pequod."

Read more here. (Ignore the lame headline: “There Whale Be Blood,” hardee har har.)

Work in Progress: Classics Are Classic

Last summer, I gave myself the big reading project of reading Moby-Dick for the first time, and the book shaped my summer. I loved the expansive sweep of it; I loved the sense that the book (and that world) it was always there that summer, whenever I had the chance to turn to it. I remember waking up at four in the morning and instead of worrying about going back to sleep, I’d simply get up and read about whales. It was the kind of book that you feel inhabited by.

In a less of a project but more of a whim, I recently picked up The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, which I had read in college. I remember feeling a certain sense of sloggishness about the reading experience, but also that things added up in a very remarkable, worthwhile way, and when I recently discovered my notebook of “important quotations” that I’d kept in college, there were several from The Portrait of a Lady.

I’m only about a third of the way through—so DON’T GIVE ANYTHING AWAY!—but I’m having the same sensation of feeling inhabited by the book. It’s a story about a girl growing up, but it’s about culture and class and freedom and gender and so on. The prose style isn’t as scary as one might believe, given the reputation James has for being dense. Lots of snappy dialogue helps! The characters are so well-drawn, with such pleasing complexity. I worry about Isabel—she’s about to head off to Florence, and I’m pretty sure she’ll get into some trouble there. (Of course, I would have married the fun, rich lord immediately, which would have made for a much shorter book.)

I guess I’m babbling away as a reminder that in our hurry-up lifestyle that values the new, it’s pleasant to be reminded of the pleasures of the old. I can’t think of a single classic book that I have either approached or revisited in recent years and not felt rewarded.

My off-the-cuff list of recommendations, if you’re looking for a meaty classic that will take over and change your life:

Moby-Dick
Anna Karenina
Sister Carrie
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(I assume it’s understood that The Great Gatsby is a great classic that obviously--!!—will change your life, just that it’s not long and sweeping in terms of page-length. Plus, I assume it’s understood that anyone reading this blog already knows they have to read Gatsby if they haven’t.)

In the end, Faulkner (maybe next summer!) had it right, that it’s “the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”

Back then, now, and always.

(Read the rest of Faulkner’s Nobel speech here: http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit.Faulkner_speech.html )

Spring Style: Gatsby T-Shirt

Hmm…I wonder who might appreciate this shirt?

You read more about this fabulous garment here: http://www.outofprintclothing.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=b-1034

And be sure to check out the line (am I pathetic if I admit that I already have The Catcher in the Rye AND Moby-Dick?)...helpful note:  the shirts run small. 

Out of Print Clothing: http://www.outofprintclothing.com/

AWP Wrap-Up

Whew…I’m still not recovered from the big conference, but if I don’t write this up now, I probably never will, especially since I have a ton of work ahead and am on the edge of getting sick, the denial stage. (Those dang germy writers! Still, better this than bedbugs, right?)

So, some random highlights of my AWP experience. (I’m going to use quotation marks, but it’s all sort of a paraphrase, based on my scribbled notes, so I apologize in advance for any errors.)—

Panels
Maybe I’m getting good at this, because I didn’t go to a single dud panel! Nothing was endured, only enjoyed, and here are a few snippets from my notebook:

--in a panel about the nonfiction writer’s persona, Sherry Simpson discussed refraction, “what is the thing outside myself that I can use to tell the story…speak to that, that passion, not the passion about the self.”

--as Michael Downs put it, in a panel about shaping memoir, the challenge is “trying to write about a problem in my life without writing about me.”

--alas, several of the planned readers in the discussion about Moby-Dick (was this organized for me?!!) were absent due to weather, but I was so impressed with Dan Beachy-Quick that I had to race down to the bookfair to buy his book, A Whaler’s Dictionary. His experience with Moby-Dick was transformative: “Every question I know how to ask, this book has shown me how to ask.” His defense of Moby-Dick as a book that ultimately does address race was eloquent and convincing, and he reminded us that “the only way to judge something is to step into the squall.” Sigh. I could have listened to him talk about Moby-Dick all day long.

--Speaking of obsession…the panel on obsession was also interesting. Though, again, someone I really wanted to hear was snowed in (Lan Samantha Chang), I really enjoyed Peter Turchi’s take on obsession related to process: “resist the temptation to reach the end, to through, rather than to deliberately dwell” within the work. And C.J. Hrbal spoke about form and obsession, alluding to the artist Eugene Delacroix who said, “What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.” All very inspiring.

--But the prize for inspiration goes to Richard Bausch, my former teacher at Bread Loaf, who simply was his own fabulous self, in conversation with Jennifer Haigh, who wisely held the reins loosely. We were treated to Barry Hannah anecdotes, jokes, stories, and enough writing wisdom to fill a castle: “if you’re confused, it’s normal…if you don’t have that doubt, you probably don’t have talent”; on spending a year reading everything by Dickens—“don’t read books, read writers”; on writers—"you are not different in kind than anyone who ever sat down to write…you are the same kind of person that Shakespeare was.” He suggested watching Cool Hand Luke for great dialogue, and reminded us that “the movies are trying to do what we [fiction writers] do every day.” And finally, the only question the writer ever has to ask him/herself: “Did I write today?” Doesn’t matter if the output was good or crap…as long as the answer to that question was “yes.” Again, sigh. I could listen to him all day!

Food
It’s different having a conference like this in my own town, as the food situation didn’t end up being as intense as it often is. Still, some good meals:

--I must confess that it was a treat to eat at McDonald’s, something I would never do in my real life unless I were on a road trip. Hard to beat those fries!

--Speaking of fries, I had AMAZING fries at a humble little diner-type restaurant on Connecticut Avenue, Woodley Café. (Boy, these reviews are mean! Maybe I didn’t have very high expectations, as it’s just a modest place and it was swamped by writers, so the service was a bit slow but well-meaning. Anyway, the fries were great and the tomato-basil soup and reuben sandwich were excellent.)

--Lamb shank special at Perry’s…yum! And we were lucky enough to get to sit at a table with couches, which felt very decadent.

--Tapas at Jaleo were as expected: stunning. This is one of my favorite places in DC, and always a crowd-pleaser and a good value. But it was sort of creepy that our server had lost her voice so had to whisper and smelled of cough drops.

--And the only thing that could get me to eat at an Ethiopian restaurant was the chance to spend more time with the fabulous editors/writers of The Sun Magazine…but I actually enjoyed the spicy food at Etete restaurant. (The honey wine, less so.) I had been planning on an early night, but found a way to rally.

--I escaped the conference to meet up with my husband and some friends at The Gibson, a craft cocktail place that had a line of 25 people at 6pm. Worth it!

Journals & Bookfair & Random Events
The bookfair was overwhelming, as always, so I tried to focus on publications that I might not know as well as some of the biggies, so, among others, I ended up with copies of Upstreet, Camera Obscura, Sycamore Review, Fairy Tale Review, The Los Angeles Review, and PMS. Very nice not to have to worry about shoving everything into a suitcase and dealing with an airport.

I would have to say that if I were a poet, I would submit to Autumn Hill Press, the Beloit Poetry Journal, and Carolina Wren Press, the editors of which were all incredibly nice to me. (Okay, my sister was working at the Carolina Wren Press table, so I may have had an in. But they have beautiful books and clearly do a great job of taking care of their writers.)

Sad lesson learned: No matter how comfortable you think those heels are, you just have to go flat shoes for any significant time in the bookfair.

Bought a Gatsby T-shirt from Hamline University and a coffee mug from The Rumpus: Write Like a Mother-F~ker, which my husband promptly claimed for his own.

Speaking of Fitzgerald, I didn’t know that Melville House published an edition of his 1920 novella, May Day: “a tale of the brutalities of the American class system.”

Finally, a heartfelt thank you to The Sun Magazine for inviting me to participate in such a wonderful and moving reading…and for having such a loyal readership who packed the house on a rainy night. Thanks to all who attended.

Oh, there’s so much more...but I don’t remember it now! Anyway, here I am, inspired and exhausted, eager for next year’s gathering in Chicago! And if you want more, here are two great wrap-ups:
Sandra Beasley
Kristin Berkey-Abbott