Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin

There is a lot to absorb, even in the first few pages, of Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin. Set ultimately in 2007, it tells the story of several women whose lives first connect at Mount St. Gabriel's, a Catholic boarding school for Girls in the mountains of South Carolina.

The novel opens with some women who graduated from the school in the 1960's as they surround their beloved (and now nearly blind) headmistress, Mother Suzanne Ravenal The women have convinced Mother to write her memoir about the school which closed in 1972 and which was Mother's home for over sixty years.  This is the last we hear of those women, which confused me, as the story then twists around a series of unfortunate memories of 1952 that preclude Mother Ravenal's one-year leave of absence from the school. Memories which creep towards, then retreat from, this year of the so-called disaster.

When Mother Ravenal is finally able to bring herself to face the pain of that year, she comes to a kind of peace with herself and with a much earlier pain that, like some festering thorn under her skin, she'd never fully understood.

I grew up in the Catholic "school system." I attended a private Catholic high school for girls run by nuns, so I get that part of the story. Of course I was a teenager as well so I get that. And I get a passionate attraction to a best friend. I just don't think these elements were put together in the most efficient manner. Too many side trips and side characters to step over along the way.

The story is well-written and does a sensitive and insightful treatment of adolescence--its clumsiness, its passions and its cruelties--as well as the origins of these frailities. But it requires so much focus to keep tabs of the dozens of characters, the multiple points of views and the revolving time frames. It ends, not with Mother Ravenal but with the three ninth grade students who were at the eye of the storm that led to Mother's abrupt leave from the school. I can't say the ending totally satisfied me. Not that I think a novel necessarily must adhere to a single character's story but that it needs to leave me with a sense that the characters have all reached a point of closure with each other. Too many of them did not.

Defending Jacob :A Review

Defending Jacob by William Landay is a real page turner! Faced with one of the worst possible scenarios...that their only child, Jacob, has been accused of murdering his bullying classmate...Andy and Laurie Barber struggle with losing not just all their friends but his career as district prosecuting attorney and hers as the ultimate suburban mom.

While Jacob is the titled character it is Andy whose story Landay tells. A man who, on the surface is a brilliant and successful prosecutor, is revealed to be quite vulnerable underneath. He struggles, not only with his son's guilt but also his own guilt over having possibly passed on to his son the "murder gene." The incident forces to the forefront a not-so-wonderful past that Andy has managed to conceal; a past which, in combination with Jacob's trial, threatens Andy's storybook marriage.

Defending Jacob is a crime thriller written with lyrical language not normally found in such fast-paced novels. It gives sensitive treatment to a close family not accustomed to being looked at under the microscopes of their upscale neighbors and friends. It gives a wrenching look inside a man who has lived a lie and been tortured by it. And, it gives an almost unbelievable and certainly horrific solution to the problem.

What Defending Jacob does not give us is much of a view inside the minds and hearts of Jacob or Laurie. It's a difficult task given the first person point of view which makes me think third person might have been more effective. My only other nit is that much of the narrative is repeated at one time or another throughout the story because of the frequent interjection of transcripts from the actual trial.

On the whole, however, it was a well-written, gripping story. I look forward to reading Landay's next work.

The Truth About Delilah Blue : A Review

The truth about Delilah Blue is that it changes. It changes because even Delilah doesn’t know who she is. Her divorced and estranged parents have used Delilah to create their own identities because even these adults in Tish Cohen’s latest novel have no clue who they are.

A story loaded with identity issues, The Truth About Delilah Blue, weaves back and forth between the points of view of Delilah (renamed Lila Mack for most of the novel), and her father, Victor, who is Lila's caretaker and who is slipping into early onset Alzheimer's.

Lila believes Elizabeth, Victor's ex-wife and Lila's mother, abandoned her. Midway through the novel Lila learns the truth. That Victor actually kidnapped her to save Lila from an irresponsible mother. That he took her from Toronto to Los Angeles and changed their names to hide Lila from the authorities. So Lila's father isn't who she thought he was either.

I liked this story because of the issues it presents. Neither parent is portrayed as perfect. Far from it. But neither is portrayed as evil either. Instead Lila learns that both parents loved her very much and did what they thought was best. In the end Lila learns that she is not the unwanted daughter of her artist mother nor the victim of her law-breaking and eccentric father but Delilah Blue, a young girl struggling to grow beyond the hurts of her past to find who she really is.

I also liked the easy going style of Tish Cohen's writing as well as her descriptions of the settings and the characters. Only two things actually bothered me. The ending, which I thought was confusing and abrupt. And the art professor of the class where Lila worked as a model who I thought was a bit inconsistent. Or maybe it was just that he was the one character I didn't like!

Finally, I liked Slash, the ever present, urbanized coyote that seemed to relate to Lila better than any human. As a passionate lover of animals I found this thread weaving through Cohen's novel a warm and significant element.

Night Swim by Jessica Keener: a Review

Scanning the shelves of a library or a bookstore one might think coming of age is only a male experience. Of course it is not and in Night Swim Jessica Keener sensitively tells the story of a young girl unable to live with or without her mother. It is a beautiful story that I plan to recommend to my new book club.

Born into a wealthy Jewish family in the suburbs of Boston, Sarah Kunitz struggles in high school with a mother who solves most of her troubles with alcohol and pills and a father who is more obsessed with his students at a local university than his daughter and three sons.

Set in the 1970s, the novel uses music as the force that ties Sarah with her older brother, Peter. When her beautiful voice is discovered by her music teacher, music also becomes a force that gives Sarah a much needed sense of worth.

It is not enough, however, to bring her closer to her mother, something Sarah wants desperately; something she continues to attempt even after her mother is gone by caring for her precious rose garden.

I have a friend who has suffered chronic bouts of depression for decades and I know, first hand, how debilitating it is for both the adult and their children. Keener does a masterful job of portraying this terrible condition in all its sadness and ugliness.

It is long after her mother's death in a car accident and long after several broken relationships, one resulting in an abortion, that Sarah comes to a place where she can stand on her own.

A poignant portrayal of a time and place that focuses, not on the notorious issues of the day--the Vietnam War, drugs, hippies and peace marches--, but on the more mundane issues within the walls of suburban households that is forced to move forward despite their personal problems. Keener's portrayal of  how Sarah, as well as her three brothers, each deal with their pain is both beautiful and sensitive.

Donald Maass -- The Dean of Powerful Writing

I am a member of Backspace (BKSP.org) It is a forum for writers who want to not only create meaningful fiction and non-fiction but who want to sell it. Backspace  holds bi-annual conferences in May and November. I attended my third last week and will, for the next several weeks, be trying to deal with the overwhelming amount of information dished out there.

Donald Maass presented a day-long workshop on the third day of the conference. Based on his incredibly successful textbook, "Writing the Breakout Novel," the workshop covered such important topics as adding dimensions to your protagonist, exceeding their personal boundaries to create larger than life moments and going through the same process with your antagonist. To say this workshop was huge is like saying the Brooklyn Bridge is a way to cross the East River.

Of course it is possible to read Maass's textbook or the workbook based on it or his latest work, THE FIRE IN FICTION. But hearing him speak on these topics, enjoying his wit and asking him pertinent questions while an issue is fresh in your mind adds so much more to the learning arc. And that doesn't even touch on the breaks where I was able to share my awe with fellow writers--not feel like I am the only one in the world who has miles to go.

 I certainly would never pretend to be qualified to advise writers on ways to improve their craft. However, I would hope some of the insights I took away from this conference might prove interesting to other fledgling writers. So, from time to time, I will post some of these insights here in no particular order.

Today I will finish with what I learned from Donald Maass about creating sympathetic characters. As we all have been told, readers do not spend much time with characters they do not like. In fact, more often than not, readers flat out abandon stories with despicable protagonists. This isn't to say all characters have to be like Mary Poppins. In fact, the most memorable protagonist of all--Scarlet O'Hara, was far from perfect. But she was both admirable and human. That, Maass says, is critical. Like all of us she had a bad side but she also had a good side. She was determined, strong and one of the first feminists. She was shrewd. She was everything we often admire in a man...but she was a beautiful, raven-haired female. In fact it is the tension created between the good and the bad in a character that makes her most appealing. That makes for a page-turner. Long after a novel is finished and returned to its shelf, the reader will remember the conflicts of a well-crafted character and that is what every writer wants. Right?

Have I Outgrown Charlotte and Wilbur?

My new perspective on Charlotte's Web.

        The world is a much different place than it was in 1952 when E. B. White’s children’s story, Charlotte’s Web, was first published.
         I am different too.
         I am a lot older, sixty-one-years old instead of three. I don’t worry about monsters in my closet. I am married and have raised three children of my own. My parents, who read Charlotte’s Web to me many times in the Fifties, are both long gone. Many of my contemporaries have passed on as well.
Does this mean I have outgrown one of my favorite bedtime stories as well? Are Charlotte the spider and Wilbur the pig no longer relevant to my world or me?
           I should answer yes. Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White’s novel, is after all, a children’s story. But denying the two famous friends a current place in my heart or at the 21st Century’s table makes my stomach turn and my head cringe. I have opened this book many times since growing up. Not to read it to my children, mind you. Our youngest left home a decade ago. Not to read to my grandchildren either--I might when the time comes but I don’t have any yet. No, I still read Charlotte’s Web because I love the story. It draws me in as an adult even more than it did when my children or I were young…for almost as many reasons as there are strands on a spider’s web.

            First off, I love farms. Growing up I was quite familiar with them. I never lived on one but there was a farm next door to my parents’ home. Even though we lived in the suburbs our neighbors raised unusual cattle and beautiful horses. More than anything else in the world I wanted a farm of my own so I could ride horses. I also visited relatives at their farms in Iowa. The small family ones, like the Arable’s and the Zuckerman’s, were especially magical. I love the fact that farmers never left Mother Earth for more complicated pursuits. I love a farm’s simplicity, its honesty and its unadorned necessity. Our culture longer needs horses and buggies or wood-burning stoves or LP records…but it does need farms. I love the animals and the crops--that farmers can fix a dinner merely by walking outdoors and picking it from the garden; the self-sustaining independence of this. Farms and their barns are a part of our heritage that is as important now as it has always been. Barns “often had a sort of peaceful smell--as thought nothing bad could happen ever again in the world.”

            I also like Charlotte’s Web because I am a sucker for friendship and friendship is a very important element in this story. Wilbur “realized that friendship is one of the most satisfying things in the world.” Like Wilbur, I only had a couple friends growing up. Unlike Wilbur, when my friends moved on to other interests like Fern Arable does, I didn’t really have anyone in the rafters…no egg sacks in my future…to fill the void.
           For a while it didn’t really matter--I was busy with college, then marriage and then with raising my family. But when my children left home it occurred to me there was a void in my life. My husband’s habit had long been to bury himself neck deep in his career so I tried to bury myself in mine. I took courses to advance in my field with all sorts of framed certificates to show for them. I got involved in community service--won all kinds of leadership awards. Then I gave classes in my field and was very much in demand. I traveled and I visited my children. My calendar was packed! But at the end of the day--in the dark of my bedroom--I was miserable.

           Finally, I realized the way to fill this void was with people--not awards to put on a bookcase, not meetings to attend and not places to visit. Even though my head said this was a crazy idea--that most folks I knew already had plenty of friends--my heart said otherwise. Not that anyone needed me but that I needed them. “After all,” Charlotte says, “What’s a life anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. By helping …perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.’”
           Unsure of my own value as a friend, it was still my goal to approach potential friends indiscriminately--with no regard for what they might offer me in return. I had a simpler calling--to seek out potential soul mates, as unnerving as that was because I was like Wilbur, a lowly pig that meant “less than nothing” to a barnyard goose.
            A funny thing happened with all this. I learned I was not the only person who needed friends. My efforts were almost instantly rewarded--the people I befriended came back at me by leaps and bounds--because they, too,were lonely! I haven’t wound up with five hundred and fourteen friends like Wilbur did when Charlotte’s babies arrived but the friends I made bring smiles to my face at the end of each day.

             And this is important because friendship is one of the few things that survive death. Death is everywhere in Charlotte’s Web. That life is temporary dominates from the very first sentence. “Where’s Papa going with that ax?” Fern asks her father.
             I am not impressed with children’s stories that speak so blatantly about death. Bambi comes to mind as well as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But unlike many other children’s stories, White offers alternatives and hope. There is Fern who saves Wilbur from the ax. There is, of all characters, a rat named Templeton who helps save Charlotte from Avery’s capture. There is, of course, Charlotte who saves Wilbur with her brilliant writing and there is Wilbur who saves Charlotte’s babies. All this is done in the name of friendship.

              Life on a farm is not for the weak. Not for runts like Wilbur who “will never amount to anything.” Poor Wilbur is perhaps more preoccupied with death than any other character in the story. Repeatedly he says things like “Do you really think Zuckerman will let me live and not kill me when the cold weather comes? Do you really think so?” And yet Wilbur, the runt, not only lives but succeeds in accepting that we all die sometime.
             Charlotte also sensed her clock ticking…“knew she didn’t have much time” though she deals with it in a more mature manner than Wilbur. Her hours were limited not just for convincing the Zuckerman’s of Wilbur’s value before they butchered him but for creating her “magnum opus”  before she died. She says to Wilbur, “‘I guess I feel sad because I won’t ever see my children.’” White tells us that it is okay to be sad but not to dwell on it. “‘You’re carrying on in a childish way,’ Charlotte says to Wilbur. ‘Stop your crying! I can’t stand hysterics.’”
              No one can avoid the end of life. Even “the crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever…the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.” Like the stalwart spider, we cannot wallow in self-pity but should pick ourselves up and carry on. And, Wilbur does. He goes from being a whiny and insecure piglet to a confident and caring pig that worries more about others (such as Charlotte’s babies) than himself. He has grown up and, as a result, “he was never without friends…and life in the barn was very good--night and day, winter and summer, spring and fall. ”

               Finally, it is the large themes in White’s story--the universal truths he relates--that lead me to keep it on my bookshelf.
               On the precariousness of friendship Wilbur says, “‘What a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty--everything I don’t like.’ Wilbur was merely suffering the doubts and fears that often go with finding a new friend.”
              On growing up, Mrs. Arable says, after “the children…danced off…toward the wonderful music and the wonderful adventure and the wonderful excitement, into the wonderful midway where there would be no parents to guard them and guide them. ‘Well, they’ve got to grow up some time.’”
               And, on miracles Dr. Dorian tells Mrs. Arable, “Oh, no, I don’t understand it. But for that matter I don’t understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle.”
Just like life itself, a miracle is to be celebrated, to be danced about, to be wondered over and appreciated for everything it offers. Especially friends.

               Charlotte’s Web is not just a classic children's story, it is a literary classic. What defines this is, of course, debatable and subjective but, for me, it is a work that holds a great appeal for adults as well as children. Like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Red Pony, Charlotte’s Web holds this appeal because it is written from the heart--simply and honestly. White presents the emotions of fear, love, joy and loneliness in a way the whole world can embrace. He presents the struggles of growing up, of accepting mortality and of remaining loyal to our friends even in our darkest hours in a way that is not frightening but beautiful. He shows me that miraculous changes take place when we overcome these struggles. Most importantly Charlotte’s Web has held this appeal for generations, which brings me once more to my opening question.
Have I outgrown Charlotte’s Web?
                  Certainly I am much different than I was in 1952 and so is my world. Instead of the spreading influence of television we have the Internet; instead of rampant posterity spoiling us we have home foreclosures breaking our hearts and our bank accounts; instead of snuggling in a chair with a printed newspaper or magazine we hold e-readers while we ride a subway or stand in line; instead of watching ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ as a family we put the kids to bed and watch ‘Cougar Town.’
Yet, in spite of all this change, we still marry and raise children. Our children grow up and look forward to the day when they can venture out on their own. We still have farms and pigs and spiders. We have not devised a potion that allows us to live forever. We still face meanness and greed around every other corner. But, like Wilbur, we also see miracles taking place every day. Hopefully we have learned to recognize them.
               That is why the message of Charlotte’s Web will never get old. It is a message that holds meaning for young and old. I have not outgrown Charlotte and Wilbur and I hope I never do. To the contrary I would urge every adult to read this story to every little one in their life as many times as that child will listen.
               Let that child bond with Charlotte and Wilbur and Fern and even with Templeton; let him hear White’s words of wisdom; let him feel the rhythm of those words and appreciate the depth of metaphor and let him embrace the truisms our entire world. Let him learn about the simplicity of farm life, sense the urgency of mortality, but know the miracle of a spider’s web. It is the only way, I fear, that this world of ours will redeem itself.
               Lastly, let that child come to love a good book and the way it takes us out of the moment in order that we can better appreciate that moment. Our world is moving much too fast--some would say it is spinning out of control. Charlotte tells Wilbur, “They just keep trotting back and forth across the bridge thinking there is something better on the other side. If they’d…wait quietly, maybe something good would come along. But no--with men it’s rush, rush, rush, every minute.” If Charlotte thought her world was rushing past, what would she think of ours?
              As his elder Charlotte taught Wilbur the value of love, loyalty and friendship. Wilbur passed that torch to her 514 babies. It’s been our turn ever since.

Harding's Tinkers and My Mortality

I cannot imagine anything more unsettling than contemplating that day when I will no longer be a physical part of this world. Worse than that, though, has to be George Washington Crosby’s plight in Paul Harding’s novel, Tinkers. It opens with him in his living room on a rented hospital bed, eight days away from death. And yet both George, and his poet father Howard, has given me reason and strength to open and re-read the pages of my own mortality.

George is desperate to “look at his life, to take the stock he always imagined a man would at his end”. He has always been a responsible, analytical and organized man. Sadly, not only is he helpless to control the order of his memories but all of them have shifted in so many different ways that what he sees is a “different self every time he tried to make an assessment.”  And since control and precision were huge priorities for George the novel opens with him hallucinating about a “torrent of (window) panes (that) would drive everyone from the room…(leaving him) marooned on his bed in a moat of shattered glass.”              

Safe, yes, but also alone.

I would guess that those last hours of life are unsettling for as many reasons as there are persons experiencing them. I think of the differences between a priest, a burglar, a mother and a child. Their thoughts on their deathbeds, if they recognize them as such, have to be vastly different. But certainly our need to comprehend what happens next is a universal concern. Does death mean we have forever lost our connections to the only life we’ve ever known? The people we love? Do we merely become “a ghost, almost made of nothing”? Or, is there a way …a promise, a hope…that we will still remain connected but perhaps not in a way we recognize?

For Kathleen, George’s mother, the “nearly martial ordering of her household is, in fact, the love she is so terrified that she does not have.” Likewise for George, a builder of solid homes and a repairer of fine clocks, abandoning his family in death--exposing them to the whims of nature and “intrepid squirrels”  just as his father and grandfather had abandoned their families--is tantamount to forsaking their love. It is a loss that both George and his quixotic father, Howard, dread.  And it is their coping with that dread, trying to make sense of its pain that not only permeates this beautiful story but also draws me to want to read it over and over.

My own father, an alcoholic, left my mother, my siblings and me when I was the same age as George. He did not leave us physically but like Howard, “The world fell away from my father the way he fell away from us. We became his dream.”  It is heart wrenching to read how George and Howard deal with their loss but, at the same time, it is comforting. It connects me to them.

Throughout his work, Harding juxtaposes dreams and reality and light and shadows in ways that create tension to the point of frustration. I found the tension not only within the story but also within myself as I read. Harding very effectively nurtures this with his narrative mode. I might say it is simply stream of consciousness except that that implies a narration of primarily the characters’ interior monologues. Harding goes several steps further by throwing in a dizzying combination of dream sequences, epileptic seizures and lyrical soliloquies like a Summer evening of fireworks that are both stunning and enlightening but, at the same time, awesome in their frightful power. This tension pitted my chances of understanding Harding at the same desperate level as the characters’ attempts to make sense of their lives. I felt their pain because Harding nearly drowns us with it-- like the silt and water of Tagg Pond that encompasses Howard as he sits in it for a day and a night while searching for his father and for himself. By the end of the novel I, like George and Howard, craved a resolution that gives us all a sense of being re-connected with those we lost and those we love.

There are other juxtapositions throughout the story. There is Howard who basks in the unpredictable but beautiful wonders of nature and its demand that we endure its hardships. “…winter already sealing the country people in behind him.”  In contrast there is George, who venerates the precise and predictable mechanical world of clocks despite their demands that we maintain them and live within the boundaries of their minutes. “Eighty four hours before he died.” 

Howard received his poetic leanings from his minister father whereas George’s tendencies reflect his mother’s “stern manner and humorless regime.”  I loved them both because Harding makes them real--vulnerable yet capable of tremendous love. As I read, more than anything, I cheered for them. I waited for them to connect once more with each other, probably because I never really connected with my own father.

In the end both George who is “lamenting the loss of this world of light and hope” (23) and Howard whose “despair came from the fact that his wife saw him as a fool, as a useless tinker” (125) do find each other and this gives comfort to their final hours. Howard sees his shadow separate from himself and “his shadow dreamed just as he did for the reason that he could imagine himself to be a shadow of something--someone--else.”  I believe that someone is George, the son for whom Howard longed.            

As George’s last breaths escape, his face becomes almost like a clock, a sundial, and the shadows of time passing across it… (his body) “merely maintaining a pantomime of human life.” The real George, the ‘it’ which I took to also be his ‘shadow’, his soul, is plumbing “depths far, far from that living room”  and far from his family’s “own, human terrors about their own wases to the it, which is so nearly was that it will not or simply cannot any longer accept their human grief.”  He connects with his family and his ancestors on a level wholly different than a tinker might.

What happens is that George senses “finally, the foolishness of attributing the unknown to secret cabals”  He accepts that “Everything was almost always obscure”…that understanding shines “for no discernable reason.” For him it was okay, upon death, to lie down and get picked over and be “used to fix broken clocks,” to become a part of the solution. “This is how, finally, we were joined.”

Because, in the end, Tinkers is not just about finding fathers or about trying to understand either their precise, organized natures or their poetic ones. It is not about trying to accommodate the natural world to the mechanical one. It is not about trying to justify the forces that bring progress or those that hinder it. In the end, what Harding’s Tinkers is about individuals finding their connections with all those other worlds and, finally, with the ones they love.

I am not alone, I am certain, in wanting my family, my peers and, yes, even my ancestors, to appreciate me. It is important--it is the nature of being human.  Like Howard and George, I’d like to die knowing that the reflection of my life, my shadow, lives on after me and attaches itself to my loved ones so that as this process of shadows coming and going, extends itself through generations and “this alternating, interdependent series of lives (forms) a sort of intaglio” that lives on well after me.

It is uncanny how much Howard is like my father. He liked to tinker in his workshop, he was a salesman, he was a father and he was a poet. I often thought he would have been happier without the burden of his family. Unlike Howard and like George, my father stuck it out--but only in a physical sense. His sense of responsibility won out but it also frustrated him. There has always been a part of me that would like him to come back to this world, to re-connect with me on a spiritual level. To assure me that, with his drinking, he left my family not because of it, but because of him. Having read Tinkers, I am comforted to know his shadow already has.

Cormac McCarthy

      I am on a Cormac McCarthy kick lately. Have read The Road which I wanted to do before seeing the movie. He is a master with words--terse, unadorned style that even scorns the use of quotation marks. The Road is not even adorned with names for its characters--simply The Boy and The Father. Still, McCarthy is extremely readable. In this work the world, or at least our country, has been decimated--assumedly by a terrible war.  There are loving references to The Mother as The Father muses about the past. She was the first to succumb to the 'Bad Guys.' Now father and son are on the road struggling for survival, a warmer climate and a safe haven from just about every creature they encounter. It is a tender portrayal of love, an uplifting tale of fierce determination and a horrifying window into what could be.

        I've also finished McCarthy's first novel in his Border Trilogy--All The Pretty Horses. Same voice as well. A coming of age story about two boys who grow up in Texas on neighboring ranches in the forty's. Soon after they leave home seeking something greater than themselves they pick up a much younger boy--a mirror of themselves. Their journey brings them to the doorsteps of resentment, cruelty, greed and love and not all of them return home to talk about it.

       Cormac McCarthy was born in 1933, the third of six children, in Rhode Island. When he was four his parents moved to Knoxville TN where they continued to raise their children as Catholics. He was named Charles after his father but changed his name to Cormac ("Son of Charles") after the Irish King. Some say his parents actually changed his name. Not sure which is the case. He attended the University of Tennessee for two years then entered the Air Force for four. He returned to the University, published two stories in its literary magazine. In 1960 he moved to Chicago and worked as an auto mechanic while he wrote his first novel, "The Orchard Keeper," published in 1965 by Random House.

You Say Goodbye and I Say Hello

Today Susan Dominus, in her BIG CITY column of the NYT, speaks to a topic never far from the lips of writers lately--the demise of the literary world as we knew it. She wraps her column in Joan Didion's famous essay, "Goodbye to All That," which as "an elegy to the passing of youth," talks to Didion's disenchantment with New York City and the literary culture that was her world. Written in 1967, Dominus writes that the essay still strikes many familiar chords.

Part of what has disappeared, Dominus says, is the "glittering, gluttonous self-indulgence" of the publishing business. It was a comment that struck home to me as I had been privy to the same self-indulgence by Detroit's corporate world back in the mid-eighties. As a florist, I was often hired to perform extravagant botanical feats for the conference and party tables of the executives--feats that often added up to $50 to the per-person tab picked up by stockholders and ordinary citizens. God only knows what the rest of the bill totaled.

It was, and is, the crux of our economic woes. The rampant wanton greed of the people in charge--often at the expense of the people at the opposite end.

Dominus comments that at least "The New York magazine and book-publishing scene is no Detroit." (How unfortunate that Detroit has become the metaphor for abject failure.) But, she goes on to mention the silver lining of all this. "People will keep making cars, only somewhere else; people will keep making literary culture, just not at the same scale, or in the same hallways, or for a living."

In part, I disagree. To the wanton greed I say, with relief, "Goodbye to All That." But unlike Dominus, who concludes that "even the most jaded among our ranks are not ready to say goodbye to all that," I say I am. and I am ready to welcome the era of the internet that will hopefully put more commercial endeavors on an even plane so that the executives and the foot soldiers are equally rewarded. The essence of cars--transportation--will not disappear; and the essence of literary culture will be just fine. People, by their very nature, crave to tell and read stories, to fantasize, to learn and to opine. So while the paper industry and the bookshelf industry might suffer, the new scene--the internet and the electronic media--will enable literature to thrive on an equal, if not larger, scale and it will be possible to make a living providing it. We just won't be able to gorge on the pocketbooks of the general public like we used to.

In November of the same year that Didion published her essay, the Beatles released their hit song, "You Say Goodbye and I Say Hello." Paul McCartney's summary of his lyrics was this: "The answer to everything is simple. It's a song about everything and nothing. If you have black you have to have white. That's the amazing thing about life."

That sums it up better for me. Life goes on and what we are passionate about will survive--might even get better!

Be Curious, Not Furious

I attended a new yoga class today--the class was new for me, yoga is not. Actually I attended it several years back and have recently returned to the Y where it is held for free three days a week. Anyway, the young woman who teaches it relayed a mantra early on that she'd borrowed from another teacher whose name I did not catch. The mantra is, "Be Curious, Not Furious."

For the class it applied to some of the more difficult moves she was planning to impose upon us. But, of course, it has a wider range of implications. I can start with what makes me furious, the least of which is having trouble with a yoga move. What does make me more furious is my dog not obeying my requests, as if I don't exist or she has temporarily lost her hearing. What also makes me furious is someone who steals a parking place in a crowded downtown location after I've been patiently waiting for the previous driver to exit it. And, being furious about the incessant rain that has plagued us lately here in Michigan.

Now for 'being curious.' Why does my dog not obey my requests? If I might refer for a moment to a book I recently read, ANIMALS MAKE US HUMAN, by Temple Grandin with Catherine Johnson, the premise is that dogs don't listen to us usually because they don't understand our request and not because they are being stubborn. We need to think like a dog and to frame our expectations within what comes natural for them. The ultimate joy for a dog, Grandin says, is to satisfy their basic emotion of Seeking. The other three dominant emotions for dogs are Rage, Fear and Panic so clearly Seeking is their favorite. It leads to such behaviours as sniffing at the bases of trees, running like banshees in the woods, exploring the orifices of other dogs and chasing after a Frisbee. So when training our dog if we can turn our expectations into a Seeking activity they will delightfully latch on to it. So why doesn't my dog come when I call her? Because I haven't made a game out of it. Or, because (this is my most common resort) I'm not holding out a bowl of food (another bonus of the Seeking emotion).

If my request were to escalate to the level of inciting Rage, Fear or Panic in my dog I may get a positive response simply as her way of eliminating the stress. But, who knows what response I might get the next time--maybe she'd run away and what good would that do?

As for the parking lot event--I have to admit I was furious. How much more positive would it have been for me to be curious about what drove that soul to be so wicked as to steal my space? I might even have been empathetic determining that perhaps they had some kind of emergency or were late for a critical appointment or were about to lose their job because they were late for work.

And finally, the weather. What would being curious instead of furious accomplish? Perhaps it would lead to introspection on my own mindset. Why do I waste my energy on something I cannot control?

Back to Grandin's book--I'll review it in a later post and I highly recommend it!

Book Review: Bel Canto

Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett, is a rewarding read on so many levels I can't begin to cover them all. I think what stayed with me the longest is that it is about boundaries and barriers and about how people cross them (or ignore them) is what defines them.

The book opens at the end of a private performance by Roxanne Coss, a renowned opera soprano's, for a host of dignitaries at the lavish mansion of a South American vice-president in celebration of the birthday of Mr. Hosokawa. He was an opera fanatic and the founder and chairman of Japan's largest electronics corporation and the hope was that he would build a factory in the host company.

The first boundary is crossed when the lights go out and the accompanist leans over and sneaks a 'strong and passionate' kiss onto Roxanne's lips and thereby crosses over, doing what 'all the men and women in the room...collectively' desire.

We soon learn the lights were extinguished by a band of marauding revolutionaries who look to kidnap the president who is not even in attendance at the event. A stalemate ensues that allows both the terrorists and the hostages opportunity to enjoy the music that Roxanne and others provide--a music that seems to cross the boundaries of the dangers present and unite everyone in a beautiful, harmonious existence.

Ann Patchett’s liquid language and unique tale about a likely but unlikely scenario as both the bad guys and the good guys become hostage to the rapture of music; hostages fall in love with their captors and untouchable opera divas fall in love with their admirers. It is as deceiving in its simplicity as it is simple in its message.

Bel Canto is a story about what constitutes barriers, what nourishes them and what happens on either side. There are many. First, there is the kiss. Then there is the wall that divides the mansion from the town--the dignitaries from the working class. There are the guns that separate the hostages from the renegades. There is the barrier of language among the 38 hostages and their captors. There are the barriers that the large corporations and governments put on their employees and citizens. There are the cultural barriers that forbid young female revolutionaries to fall in love with corporate interpreters; or, American opera stars to fall in love with Japanese CEOs; or, militant generals to teach chess to their teenage foot soldiers; or, entrepreneurs to play piano for militants. All of these are lyrically crossed.

Through it all we read about the beautiful music, which brings everyone together in appreciation and we come to love Gen, Mr. Hosokawa’s interpreter, who brings everyone together in language.

But all this happens in a most unlikely world, a Camelot given temporary sustenance by circumstance--a dream that can never come true.

Monday Musings--David Morrell

More Than Rambo's Father




For those of you who read thrillers and suspense fiction David Morrell's name is a household word. If you do not read thrillers and suspense you will surely recognize what he calls himself --'Rambo's father.'

But he is so much more than that.

David received the prestigious Bob Kellogg Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Internet Writing Community at Backspace's annual conference in New York city a week ago. As a member of Backspace I attended for my second time and was one of the lucky ones in the audience both for David's acceptance speech and his keynote address the following afternoon.

Among his many titles are the aforementioned Rambo story, FIRST BLOOD, BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE and more recently SCAVENGER and soon to be released SHIMMER. The last two are biotech thrillers. Haven't read SCAVENGER yet but my girlfriend who has read all his novels said it is really creeeeepy.

What David Morrell should have said is that he is the 'father' of all contemporary writers.

I am an avid reader and an occassional reader of thrillers. I love Marcus Sakey's books...as much because he is an awesome writer as because he is a dear friend of my daughter, Jennifer. I also enjoy Sean Chercover and have hosted an authors' party for both these men. I enjoy Karen Dionne, who writes environmental thrillers and have hosted her at my local Rotary Club. I also enjoyed books by Elmore Leonard, who lives nearby, as well as his son, Peter's, book, QUIVER.
Peter has a new one, TRUST ME, that I can't wait to read.

I hate to admit I had never picked up any of David Morrell's books but I bought three at the conference, have read two and loved them both. His characters are complex, his pacing is awesome and his plots are both exciting and believable. And I love his voice...like it's Halloween and you're sitting on his lap and he's telling you this scary story. I love this guy!

David shared his life story with us and it isn't pretty. It is a story he often shares so I won't repeat it all except to say that the man he is today is proof of his tenacity, internal strength and compassion. Born in Ontario Canada his father died in World War I before David was born. When he was three his mother drove him in a borrowed car to an orphanage in the country, dropped him off at the playground to join the other children, turned around and left. She did return for him after marrying a man who hated children and was abusive to both David and his mother. He attended school in Canada up until his PhD which he received at Penn State University and has lived in the USA ever since.

David has an obvious love for writing and for writers, and more than that he cares about both--so much so that he spends a large portion of his time helping young sprouts like me stay focused and inspired.

I'd like to summarize some of the inspiration he imparted at his Backspace Keynote Address.

First you have to love writing because if you are in it for the fame or the money you will likely be disappointed. He told about the disparaging comments one of his early mentor made about David's early stories.

Second you have to read a lot and write a lot because that is the only way you will improve.

Third (and this was the one that struck me hardest) you have to find your voice. Where? It's hiding out with your demons in the unpleasant basement of your subconscious. David suggested we explore our deepest emotions and then listen to our daydreams. Listen to the good ones but, more importantly, listen to the ugly ones; and never, ever, stop them until they have played out to the end.

More than one author has suggested that an unahppy childhood makes for a writer's gold and this is what they meant. And if you say your childhood was perfect so you have no inspiration--most likely you are lying!

Finally David said to keep your integrity and write the book you are intended to write. Write for the moment you are in. Don't let the market, or what others say is the market, influence you. All of that is, after all, out of your control.

Thank you David Morrell for your inspiring words and support.

Book Review: Story of Edgar Sawtelle

I recently finished reading a fantastic novel, "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski.

Books about dogs and their humans have abounded at the top of the best seller lists for the past decade and have warmed the hearts of readers for centuries. My earliest memory of a heart wrenching dog story is of Disney’s “Old Yeller.” Another favorite is “Shaggy Muses, the Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton and Emily Bronte.” More recently “Marley and Me” by John Grogan is a delightful read. And Garth Stein’s “The Art of Racing in the Rain,” promises to be another.

But I think far and away, “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” has them all beat on language, story, craft and depth. It is a work that will remain in the minds and hearts of readers everywhere for decades to come.

The novel’s forboding prologue tells of an American soldier who, while stationed in the Korean War, trades medicine to an herbalist for his dying grandson in exchange for a deadly poison in an antique cruet. It was 1952 and the soldier declines to reveal his reason for wanting the potion.

Edgar is the long-awaited child of Gar and Trudy Sawtelle who married in 1951. Trudy had brought to the marriage an uncanny ability to train and understand Gar’s dogs like none other while he focused on the heredity of their lines and the details of breeding. His goal was to create dogs like no other that was a cross of all the best dogs he could find and call them simply ‘Sawtelle dogs.’

Edgar is preceeded in birth by two miscarried siblings and a brother who is stillborn and tenderly buried by Gar at the base of a birch grove on his property. Edgar is born a mute but his condition never comes between him and either the animals nor the people with whom he communicates except for his nemesis, his Uncle Claude who is unwilling to learn to read or use sign language.

Edgar becomes an integral part of his family’s dog breeding business and one of his tasks early on is selecting names for the pups, a challenge that becomes another form of communication for him.

From the time he was conceived Almondine, one of the Sawtelle dogs, is Edgar’s mentor, his protector and his muse. The idyllic setting and peaceful routines are, however, shattered with the arrival of Gar’s brother, Claude. Claude is a ne’er do well, a dog fighter and the discontented sibling and the thorn is Gar’s side. But Gar’s sense of familial obligation makes room in his heart and on his farm for the prodigal brother.

For the emotionless imposer, a take on Hamlet’s Claudius, “It was never a question of whether Claude could learn to do something, just a question of whether it would be worthwhile and how long it would take.” So eventually he finds a way to get rid of Gar, marry his wife and take over the kennel.

“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” seeks to reveal the answers to several mysteries besides who caused Gar’s death. Edgar obsesses over learning the true story of how his parents met. But when Trudy finally tells him had has lost interest. And on several occasions Trudy asks her son if he knows yet what is so unique about a Sawtelle dog which, until the end, he cannot answer.

After his murder Gar comes to his son as an apparition during a driving rain storm to warn him about Claude. And Ida Paine, the ancient proprietor of Popcorn Corners’ grocery, to whom God told a secret when she was born, gives Edgar a psychic vision about his uncle, the old man in Korea and the antique cruet. “’And if you go,” she whispered, “don’t you come back, not for nothing. Don’t let the wind change your mind.’”

In the end I was left with the sense that it would be the Sawtelle dogs, Gar Sawtelle’s vision, the mutts he bred for their awesome individual qualities they’d bring to the future, that would eventually inherit the earth.

Essay, Edgar’s alpha, was the one who understood the meaning of the devastating fire, who then led the other dogs “through fence after fence...They would follow or they would not, she had only made the possibility clear.”

That was the secret of the Sawtelle dogs, their ability to choose. And, in the west, Forte the ghostly forefather of them all, stood on the treeline beyond the field. Essay “looked behind her one last time...along the way they’d come...turned and made her choice and began to cross.”

Beyond the suspense, compassion and insight of the story itself is the skill with which David Wrobelwski spins it. His imagery, dialogues and interplay of characters and scenes is deft and delicious.

“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” is the debut novel of a 48 year old software designer but I have a suspicion the literary world has, fortunately, not read the last of David Wroblewski.

Book Review: Water for Elephants

I have a thing about fog. While grey skies in Michigan take me into a hole that is difficult to deal with, fog intrigues me. Maybe it is its ethereal nature, as if by poking my finger into it the greyness disappears like air in a balloon. Maybe it is the calmness that it invokes.

Southwest Florida had a rare dose of extended fog early this month...it crawled in off the Gulf late one afternoon while I was driving home from the north and thought maybe a gigantic fire was raging in a palmetto forest but I could not smell smoke. It was like an opaque cocoon that both comforted and unnerved me and it didn't roll back out to sea for five more days.

About that time I finished reading Sara Gruen's WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, released in 2006,
which I would recommend to anyone. It is a delightfully romantic story set in the last depression
(to separate it from our current one!) told from the memory of 93 year old Jacob Jankowski whose parents are killed when he is finishing Veterinary School in New York. Though he had planned to join his father's thriving veterinary practice, Jacob learned not only that his parents had mortgaged everything they owned to send him to school but that even his father's practice was dissembled to pay their debts.

Penniless and unable to concentrate on his final exams Jacob runs off to seek solace and winds up on the train of a disfunctional circus at a time when any job at all, no matter how horrific, was worth keeping.

For seven years Jacob found his love of all creatures, his high moral standards and his passion for Marlena at life-threatening odds with his superiors whose personality issues ranged from
wanton narcissism to murderous greed.

Jacob is now a spunky old man whose mind is stronger than his body and who rails against the inane rules of the nursing home he calls home. He rarely recognizes his infrequent family visitors but remembers in finite detail his days in the circus. Sara Gruen deftly carries the story from Jacob's current frustrations back to his luscious recollections of what once was. His longing for his beloved Marlena, a beautiful equestrian and star of the show whom he eventually marries but who passes before him, sugar coats his memories that are not always so pleasant.

The third dominant character is Rosie, an elephant purchased for her promise to redeem the circus's failing revenues and who placidly endures her terrible abuse until her own sense compassion is uncontrollably violated.

What endeared me to this story was Sara's wonderful understanding of people and what motivates them to make bad choices. She juxtaposes horrendous cruelty against unbounded compassion but the last page left me with confidence that goodness is master and that all creatures, animal and human, deserve and benefit from it. Her research into a world of human and animal oddities that is foreign to most of us is thorough and her sense of humor softens the sharp edges of an often wicked world.

The circus world is a microcosm from our past but its 'rubes' and its stars teach lessons in WATER FOR ELEPHANTS that are universal and current with a pace that grabbed me within the first few pages and held me captive until the end.

Getting back to the fog...by the fifth day it began to unnerve me. The sun would peek out midday and then recede to let the greyness return. Maybe it was just to remind me of what I 'd escaped for two months of winter. Or, maybe it was to reassure me that fog is like a good read or the healing time spent writing--a lacuna that both embraces and tries to understand the sharp edges of the present.

Review of 'Story of Edgar Sawtelle'

I recently finished reading a fantastic novel, "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski.

Books about dogs and their humans have abounded at the top of the best seller lists for the past decade and have warmed the hearts of readers for centuries. My earliest memory of a heart wrenching dog story is of Disney’s “Old Yeller.” Another favorite is “Shaggy Muses, the Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton and Emily Bronte.” More recently “Marley and Me” by John Grogan is a delightful read. And Garth Stein’s “The Art of Racing in the Rain,” promises to be another.

But I think far and away, “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” has them all beat on language, story, craft and depth. It is a work that will remain in the minds and hearts of readers everywhere for decades to come.

The novel’s forboding prologue tells of an American soldier who, while stationed in the Korean War, trades medicine to an herbalist for his dying grandson in exchange for a deadly poison in an antique cruet. It was 1952 and the soldier declines to reveal his reason for wanting the potion.

Edgar is the long-awaited child of Gar and Trudy Sawtelle who married in 1951. Trudy had brought to the marriage an uncanny ability to train and understand Gar’s dogs like none other while he focused on the heredity of their lines and the details of breeding. His goal was to create dogs like no other that was a cross of all the best dogs he could find and call them simply ‘Sawtelle dogs.’

Edgar is preceeded in birth by two miscarried siblings and a brother who is stillborn and tenderly buried by Gar at the base of a birch grove on his property. Edgar is born a mute but his condition never comes between him and either the animals nor the people with whom he communicates except for his nemesis, his Uncle Claude who is unwilling to learn to read or use sign language.

Edgar becomes an integral part of his family’s dog breeding business and one of his tasks early on is selecting names for the pups, a challenge that becomes another form of communication for him.

From the time he was conceived Almondine, one of the Sawtelle dogs, is Edgar’s mentor, his protector and his muse. The idyllic setting and peaceful routines are, however, shattered with the arrival of Gar’s brother, Claude. Claude is a ne’er do well, a dog fighter and the discontented sibling and the thorn is Gar’s side. But Gar’s sense of familial obligation makes room in his heart and on his farm for the prodigal brother.

For the emotionless imposer, a take on Hamlet’s Claudius, “It was never a question of whether Claude could learn to do something, just a question of whether it would be worthwhile and how long it would take.” So eventually he finds a way to get rid of Gar, marry his wife and take over the kennel.

“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” seeks to reveal the answers to several mysteries besides who caused Gar’s death. Edgar obsesses over learning the true story of how his parents met. But when Trudy finally tells him had has lost interest. And on several occasions Trudy asks her son if he knows yet what is so unique about a Sawtelle dog which, until the end, he cannot answer.

After his murder Gar comes to his son as an apparition during a driving rain storm to warn him about Claude. And Ida Paine, the ancient proprietor of Popcorn Corners’ grocery, to whom God told a secret when she was born, gives Edgar a psychic vision about his uncle, the old man in Korea and the antique cruet. “’And if you go,” she whispered, “don’t you come back, not for nothing. Don’t let the wind change your mind.’”

In the end I was left with the sense that it would be the Sawtelle dogs, Gar Sawtelle’s vision, the mutts he bred for their awesome individual qualities they’d bring to the future, that would eventually inherit the earth.

Essay, Edgar’s alpha, was the one who understood the meaning of the devastating fire, who then led the other dogs “through fence after fence...They would follow or they would not, she had only made the possibility clear.”

That was the secret of the Sawtelle dogs, their ability to choose. And, in the west, Forte the ghostly forefather of them all, stood on the treeline beyond the field. Essay “looked behind her one last time...along the way they’d come...turned and made her choice and began to cross.”

Beyond the suspense, compassion and insight of the story itself is the skill with which David Wrobelwski spins it. His imagery, dialogues and interplay of characters and scenes is deft and delicious.

“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” is the debut novel of a 48 year old software designer but I have a suspicion the literary world has, fortunately, not read the last of David Wroblewski.

Buy Books this Holiday...From an Independant

Looking for a holiday gift idea that keeps on giving and has a reasonable price tag?

How about a book?

If you are looking for some great book suggestions link on to the blog, http://buymorebooks.blogspot.com/.
Many of the members of Backspace, an interactive website for writers, publishers and agents, are making their recommendations, including some of my own.

Then seriously consider supporting the independant book dealer. We are all hurting this season, but they are all running the risk of losing their businesses entirely and they are just folk like the rest of us.

Then, when you buy any books for the holidays, enter the titles you purchased under the comment section to help us reach our goal of 1 million books!

Laura Kasischke

I read today in the Detroit Free Press that Michigan author Laura Kasischke was one of 50 artists awarded a prestigious USA Fellowship grant yesterday. This is the third year of the USA Fellows program which awards funds directly to working artists in a wide range of media from architecture to visual arts. Laura has published seven books of poetry, four novels and two young adult novels. Her novel, "The Life Before Her Eyes" was made into a film starring Uma Thurman that released last April.

I met Laura at the Bear River Writer's Conference in northern Michigan last Spring. She is an inspiring mentor, gracious individual and bewitching lyricist. One more feather in a cap with many.

Congrats Laura!