Beth Kephart's Blog, page 165

dissatisfied—a picture of me, editing me

When people tell me that I write fast, that book making must be so very easy for me, that I must just plow through my stories, that I'm so lucky, I'm tempted to show them my desk.  First, all the handwritten pages, discarded.  Then all the typed pages, printed, edited, discarded.  Then another typed page—because I thought I was done—which is printed, scribbled over, and discarded.



This, above, is how it really is for me.



Very little satisfies.[image error]

Last Week and Next, and the Week After That. Join Me?

One week ago today I was still anticipating the Springsteen concert, still thinking my next book would be based in Siena, still ashamed of the thatchy weeds out by my mailbox, and still holding my breath (just a little) as my son moved into his new home and work opportunity. 



How things change, and how quickly.



I've since danced in Springsteen's dark, booked an apartment (for research) in Florence, tugged (most of) the weeds away, and listened to my son talk, with such confidence and happiness, about his new city and his deepening passions.  I have read books about birds and eggs, teared up at Michelle Obama, been interviewed by two men for separate publications who startled me with their knowledge of my work, navigated unexpected changes in my publishing life, finished an employee newsletter, reached out to friends who were there, and been reminded, over and over again, that love is the most important thing.  Love, and a child's happiness.



This weekend I'm hibernating just a bit as I work my way through the first and second chapters of that now-Florence novel.  I'm going to the movies with my husband (he has promised me a trip to "The Words"). And I'm preparing for the next few weeks.  Please join me, if you can.




September 12, 2012
Radnor Memorial Library, Radnor, PA
SMALL DAMAGES launch party
7:30 PM.  Details here.

September 14, 2012
The Bruce Springsteen/Glory Days Symposium
Monmouth University
Appearing with April Lindner, Jane Satterfield, Ned Balbo, and Ann Michael
Details here.




September 21, 2012
Joining David Levithan, Ellen Hopkins, and Jennifer Hubbard at Children's Book World
7 PM. Details here.






    [image error]

because we can't control most things, because writing is my terra firma

How rarely we control the world, or anything in it.  How mostly futile it is to say, I want this thus, and I want it now.  How often we learn (it doesn't matter our age, it doesn't matter our past) that the only things we can control are those that we raise up with our own hands and sometimes (not always) our hearts.



So that yesterday I cleared the weeds from the lawn's front edge and changed that patch of earth.  So that afterwards I came in the house and sat on the couch, my pinched-nerve leg wrapped in heat and a pink book of blank pages on my lap.  I wrote the first 350 words of a new book that will soon take me to Florence.  I tunneled toward my consuming love affair with words.



Why do you keep writing? I'm asked.



Because writing, I say, is my terra firma.




[image error]

I want it all, for your sakes.

Last evening, as the sun went down on the Main Line mecca, Wayne, I claimed an outside restaurant table with a former student and shared a glass of wine.  You'll meet her through her words next year, when Handling the Truth comes out, but last evening she was all mine—bright, succeeding, independent, adventurous, the sort of daughter and sister who would make any family proud.  Certainly she makes this professor proud.



I returned home to a late meal prepared by my husband and to text messages from my son who had completed his first day at the new job and was ecstatic.  I am so happy here, he wrote, and what parent is not made whole by those words?



I don't know when it happened to me, but somewhere along the way the horizons changed, the coasts, the possibilities, and I now look back toward others who stand just ahead of their dreams.  I am moved by youth.  I remember, sift, and sort it.  But it will not be mine again.  I have used up some chances and smudged some lines and achieved a few spare things while not achieving many others.  I have let my own self down, or not lived up to my potential, or not risked enough, and all that, far more than age, marks me.  All that delimits me.



So that my greatest happiness now is what glimmers for the young people in my life—my exquisite son, my tremendous students, my friends' sensational children, my cherished young friends in publishing, and those of you who, just setting out on this life, visit this blog telling your stories. I want no smudged lines for you.  I want the rewards that come from risks for you.  I want more than a few spare things.



I want it all, for your sakes.

city love, Main Line Media News, and a memoir panel at Penn

Late yesterday afternoon, I took a quick dance lesson then hurried to the train to see my kid, city side.  I have been down there untold times of late—checking out apartments, moving boxes in, arriving, breathless, to help with something, and of course, this young man (not a kid) needs no help at all.  I'm just drumming up excuses to spend an hour here or there with him.



So that I have seen the city under sun and the city swollen with rain, the city just after dawn, the city late at night.  And I have felt more energized and alive than I have felt for a long time.  Philadelphia does that to me.  And so do snatches of conversation with my guy.



This morning a text comes in, six a.m.ish.  I'm working on my story, it said.  Because my son shares this with me, this love of words.  This pleasure taken in filling the silent hours with vivid fictions.  By now, he's off to work, first day.  And my happiness for him is giant.



Meanwhile, Ryan Richards of Main Line Media News interviewed me yesterday morning at 8:15 a.m. (not-ish) and, 13 hours later, this Springsteen-infused story (which is also about the making of Small Damages for Philomel) had been posted.  Tuesday is day-before-pub day there at Main Line Media News and Ryan plays a central role in getting all stories out and prettied up for show.  I have no idea, therefore, how he wrote such a nice story in the midst of all that, but I thank him.  I hope he got some sleep last night.



Finally, tucked into the day was this formal announcement from Penn about the Homecoming Weekend Panel I'll be sharing with my friends Buzz Bissinger, John Prendergast, and Cynthia Kaplan, as well as James Martin, whom I am eager to meet.  Join us if you can.

October 27, 2012 /Saturday 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM  

  


Memoir: Methods and Meanings

 Kelly Writers House


Arts Cafe


 3805 Locust Walk

 



Join alumni authors at Kelly Writers House as they read from and talk about their work in memoir.  Panelists include Pulitzer Prize-winner Buzz Bissinger C'76, whose latest book is Father's Day: A Journey Into the Mind and Heart of My Extraordinary Son; essayist and performer Cynthia Kaplan C'85, whose 'true stories' are collected in Why I'm Like This and Leave the Building Quickly; Beth Kephart C'82, author of multiple memoirs and young-adult novels, and of the forthcoming Handling the Truth; and James Martin W'82, author of In Good Company, which tells the story of his conversion from GE executive to Jesuit priest, and eight other books. Pennsylvania Gazette Editor John Prendergast C'80 will moderate the discussion. Advance registration is not required, but seating is limited. RSVP to whhomecoming@writing.upenn.edu or call (215) 746-POEM.  

[image error]

Small Damages as a Dear Reader.com Selection

So proud and happy today to have Small Damages selected as the teen book club pick by the esteemed Dear Reader.com for this back to school week.



For more on all the interesting choices and the book club itself, follow this link.



Thank you, Suzanne, Valerie, and Dear Reader.com. [image error]

Bruce Springsteen: Gallant

What hasn't been said about Bruce Springsteen live?  He sweats through to the bottom of his boots for you.  He yields the microphone to little girls in pink cowboy hats who have the nerve to sing a sunny day.  He talks about ghosts, and he pounds his heart for redheads.  He plays "The River" for a soldier in Afghanistan and an obscure tune for a guy with a sign.  He's already laughing with the Phillies crowd before he mentions the opposing team—stars in his eyes kind of smile, though, man, he's been going like this with his Wrecking Ball Tour for so long that you don't know how he's even standing, how he gets those guitars, one after another, strapped on, how the mike doesn't fly out of his grip.  He bows his head beside Clarence Clemons's nephew, Jake, and you know he feels the uncle's presence like a prayer, and he is ageless, a stuck Catholic, a confessing romantic, a professor of truth, a scorcher and a crooner, still running, still dancing, still ad libbing, still performing.  He's not out of breath, but you are, and he has the power (I'm telling you) to stop the rain. 



I was there.



That is what has not, until this moment, been written about Springsteen.  I was there.  Having waited since I was eighteen years old.  Having worked all those years to convince my husband.  Having finally bought the tickets and made the announcement, We're going, because I had an excuse, this little talk I plan to give (thanks to April Lindner) at the Glory Days Symposium a few short weeks from now.  I had to go.  It was business this time.  And besides, this girl is getting old.



Good Lord, it was better, it was richer, it was deeper, it was more hallowed than even I thought it could be.  And I never sat down, though I had seats.  And I danced—by myself and with the crowd.  And I sang—hard and out loud.  And late, late at night, walking back through the city with my husband and a couple of kids just out of school, I talked Old Springsteen Love with Young Springsteen Love, and let me tell you this:  We spoke the same language.



The shard below, blogged in early August, is snapped from what I'd written in theory for my Springsteen paper, "Raw to the Bone."  Every once in a while, in this life, I get it right.  I was right when I danced Springsteen alone in my house, and I was right last night, dancing with Philly:

The music will rise through the
soles of my feet.  It will scour,
channel, silt, and further rise.  
In the dark cavern of my hips it will catch and swish.  Outside, perhaps, the stars have come
up, and probably the deer have vanished, and maybe the cicadas are rumbling
around in their own mangled souls. 
But inside, a river churns, widens, roars, and steeps, and I am dancing
Springsteen.   

Bruce Springsteen.  Wrecking Ball Tour.  Citizens Bank Park.  Philadelphia.  September 3, 2012.



I was there.


[image error]

Bruce Springsteen dancing with his mom, and I'm going to see this man, rain or shine, tonight.

True, I have been monitoring the Philadelphia weather forecast for the past two weeks.  Also true:  Every single report has promised some kind of rain for tonight, perhaps even thundershowers.



Heck, I don't care.



I'm going to see Bruce.  Lifelong dream (to be fair, since age 18, starting on my third day as a Penn freshman, which, at my age, seems like a lifetime), and water will not thwart it.



LEVEL:  Field

SECTION: N

ROW: 7

SEAT: 1



I will be there.  Looking like a dork in a plastic poncho, if I have to.  But there, alive, Bruce before me.



Today, I prepare.  Listening to all his albums (I own each one) through.  Again. Olympic-style, dancing and crooning.



It's hard work, but somebody has to do it. 


[image error]

afternoon love (Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia)

I won't bore you with the details.  You know what matters, anyway.  My son, having been given a dream opportunity in a wonderful Philadelphia agency, moved to the city this weekend.  The place could not be more perfect—old and also new, a studio with elbow room, nice light, new systems.  When we visited again this afternoon to help attend to some details that certainly didn't need our attending (the excuses parents make!), I took the chance to take a quick neighborhood walk. 



Into Rittenhouse Square I went—my hair all humid, my shorts a little baggy, my ear pressed to a phone conversation with my friend Kelly.  All of a sudden, they appeared—not one but three afternoon wedding parties.  I had no real camera to speak of, but snapped away with my phone (goodbye, Kelly).  The third bride got wind of me (perhaps she reads this blog?) and vanished before I could place a trace of her here. 



But here are two of the brides encountered on this day, two of the journeys now under way.  A few blocks north, the Parkway was jammed with the Made in America crowds.  A few miles south, Bruce Springsteen was in the house, warming up for yours truly, who will see him (rain or shine!) tomorrow.  A few blocks east, my son in his happy new home.



All in all, an afternoon of love.[image error]

Glen Hansard, Marketa Irglova, and The Swell Season

A few weeks ago, I watched "The Swell Season," the black-and-white documentary featuring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, the musicians who brought us "Once."



("Once" remains one of my very favorite movies of all time.)



I can't get the documentary out of my head, and so I share the trailer with you today, on this cloudy Labor Day Weekend Sunday.[image error]