Beth Kephart's Blog, page 168

my happy introduction to West Reading: thank you, Wise Owl Bookstore

Yesterday I learned something new about my own near geography.  If you drive Route 422 all the way out—until it's no longer a highway but a traffic light road, until you cross the Schuylkill River several times, until the road starts to bank and curve, until you reach Penn Avenue—you'll find your way to West Reading, a most-happening place.  They teach ballroom dance in an old theater, serve gourmet meals out on the street, offer tasty cheese at a well-appointed wine bar, sell shoos spelled just like that: shoos.



And in The Wise Owl Bookstore, an independent as adorable as they come, shop owner Kira makes room for special events created by the very special Sue Lange (pictured front and center).  Yesterday was open mike day, and I was there, aligned with other writers and readers, for a memorable evening of stories and talk.  Teresa, my kick-butt combat teacher, stopped by.  A tawny cat slinked beneath chairs.  Stuffed owls hung suspended in time.  And that left elbow in the front row? It belongs to none other than the fabulous A.S. King.  (It's not that my camera neglected King, by the way.  It's that she ducked.)



In times like these—in any times—it is heartening to find a thriving town, an intellectual community, and a young book lover who chose to risk an enterprise that is subtitled "clever books for clever people."  I was proud and happy to temporarily stand among the clever.[image error]

You Are My Only is sweetly remembered by Read Now Sleep Later

... and I am grateful for the lovely endorsement by this well-regarded force in books (and book-induced insomnia).



I am grateful, too, to Egmont Gal, for keeping me close and letting me know.



RMSL's words can be found here.[image error]

what mathematically inclined people do at the beach

No, no, no.  I was not referring to me.  I was referring to my brother, who so generously shares his treasured Stone Harbor vacation with me.  Yesterday was our day, and so my son and I set off for the sea. We played, sang to, and analyzed Springsteen all the way there and all the way back, while occasionally speaking of Other Equally Important Things.  We Frisbeed (I'm terrible), paddle balled (I'll never be good enough, but don't tell my nephew, who is still holding out hope that Aunt Beth will work her way up to worthy beach companion status), walked (at this I succeed; just ask me), jumped waves (or stood near them), ate (anything we wanted, thanks to all the calories we'd burned), left books behind (no, not my own; what kind of ego do you think I have?), and ice creamed (Springer's, of course).  We did not buy a hermit crab at Hoy's, and I am pleased to report that at one point during our Hoy's shopping spree, my brother stopped festooning our heads with bad hats.



On the beach, mid-day, my brother, one of the world's great math guys (I kid you not), entertained us with this first-rate sand hill.  I'm sure there's a quadratic tucked into the design, though I wouldn't know a quadratic if it up and splashed me.  Still, my mathematical deficits do not dilute my enthusiasm for our sacred day at the beach.



It was wonderful.  Thank you, Jeff, Donna, Miranda, and Owen. [image error]

Love Bomb/Lisa Zeidner: Reflections

Lisa Zeidner's intelligence precedes her.  You hear talk about it, you read it in her books, you see it in her brilliantly crafted reviews for the Times, Slate, GQ, and then, one day, you meet her.  She'll be surrounded by students, most likely, on the Rutgers University campus in Camden, where she directs the M.F.A. program in creative writing. She'll be goading, and at the same time loving.  She'll be flabbergastingly quick on her feet.  She'll be defending the campus from New Jersey politics, if that's what's required at that hour, and talking about film, Italy, new books, and old, all at the same time.  And she'll make you feel right at home.



I don't actually remember when I first met Lisa, nor can I accurately count how many times I've joined her on her campus to read from a recently published book or to teach memoir or to discuss the current standing of young adult literature, and young adults.  It's true, I have to cross a bridge to do it, and I have to drive the Schuylkill in rush hour.  But that's the kind of thing I'll do for Lisa—the kind of thing many of us do to share in her company for a while.



(Don't give me grief about my driving, Lisa.  Don't.  You.)



For the past many years Lisa, already the author of four novels and two collections of poems, has been at work on a new novel—a lacerating satire, a comedy of non-manners, a pointed commentary on the colossal ambitions and personal jitters of the very people (mental health professionals) who are supposed to save others.  Called Love Bomb, it is a hostage story that unfolds at a bride's family home on her wedding day.  Tess may be ready to tie the knot, but another bride, this one more demanding, has shown up, too, bearing ammunition in a white lace gown, a gas mask, and steel-toe boots.  This masked bride wants answers, apologies, confessions, and no one is sure who she is or how much danger she has packed.  Confessions, accordingly, ensue.  Public presentations of insecurities and secrets among ex-lovers and continuing rivals and, oh yes, a bunch of shrinks.  One by one, and consequentially, the guests come clean, and still the hostage taker waits—for the right words from the right person.  If only she would say who that person is and what has driven her to this act of suburban terror.



What do people reveal, in those up-against-it hours?  Who dares to be a hero?  Is the language of therapy even vaguely annealing among those who are certified to use it?  How does one find air to breathe in a room so small and crowded with excess guilt and shame?  Who loves enough to step forward?  What will restore peace to this inverted day?  Lisa Zeidner's language is (of course) highly intelligent—that razor-sharp wit forever leavened by her poetic bent.  Her perspective is (we expect nothing else) fierce.  Her satire is (no question it would be) smartly calculated. When Lisa sits down to write a novel she doesn't tremble.  She writes sentences like these and invites us in to a festering room on a ceremonious day that may, in the end, but we have to read to find out, still cling to some vestige of tradition:

If they were a tribe in unforgiving terrain, if life were hard and short, there would be an excuse for people to festoon their hair with feathers and machete the suckling pig.  People in love?  Let's eat!  But here?  It was silly.  Why sanctify their love with a ceremony?  Especially a ceremony performed no in a church but in a suburban backyard, by a friend who made a point of alerting everyone that he bought his ministry license on the Internet.

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the making of Beasts of the Southern Wild

How the remarkable "Beasts of the Southern Wild" started among friends, moved to a convenience store in New Orleans, worked not by script but by character and essence.  A film made by a community for and about a surreal community. 



"Living the movie as we made it." 



"Film as an athletic event."  [image error]

Philadelphia Street Scenes: transferring the keys to my city

I call Philadelphia "my" city, but it does not, of course, belong to me; nothing is ever for keeps.  But I did grow up visiting my mother's mother and father in southwest Philly, and I went to Penn across the river, and I lived first in the Art Museum area, then on Camac (two different apartments) and next on Gaskill, and I've returned, repeatedly, to take photographs, to collect stories, to teach.  If any city were, for a moment, mine, it would be this one.



But now this place I love will also belong to my son, as he moves into a new job and apartment among the gridded streets.  Last night, perhaps the nicest night Philadelphia has seen all summer long, we took him to a special dinner.  I, being my perhaps overly enthusiastic self, suggested a before-dinner stroll down near Delancey, where much of Dangerous Neighbors takes place, before working back toward Rittenhouse Square and east.



I caught the moment with my tiny Canon.[image error]

please join me at The Wise Owl Bookstore, West Reading, PA, Tuesday August 21st

It's all right here, in this lovely poster. 



I'll be there.  Teen writers will be there.  The good people at Wise Owl will be there. 



You want to hear something else?  Something full of super loveliness?  Teresa, the World's Greatest Body Combat instructor, thinks she may be there as well.  Teresa doesn't just kick my butt every Saturday morning at 8 AM.  She turns butt kicking and all kinds of other kicking into a party (and then goes off to teach another two hours of crazy fitness for the fit crazies).



Join us?




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my students join me (virtually) for a party

I was having a party for my memoir-spectacular Penn students at the close of last semester when they reversed the logic and presented me (a closet foodie) with a gift certificate to my choice of some of Philadelphia's finest restaurants.



I have saved that gift all summer long, telling myself that I would not use it until something very special happened.  Yesterday, as readers of this blog know, that something special happened: my son was accepted into the paid internship program at a fabulous advertising agency.



We're city bound, then, my family of three.  And my students—you are all here with me.  My family is big and proud and boisterous, thanks to the ever-continuing goodness of you.[image error]

a door opens and a dream is answered: my boy writes the next chapter

From the minute I held my black-haired son in my arms in a past-midnight hospital room, I knew that nothing would ever be as important to me as his health and happiness.  When the world has opened to this child of mine, I have soared. When the world has said, Not now, wait, I have walked the house in the dark, wearing out the floorboards, quaking.  If he isn't happy, my own happiness runs thin.  If things stall for him, they stall for me.



This summer, that now-grown son of mine graduated from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, moved back home, picked up endless hours at the local movie theater to earn his modest keep, and began the process of looking for the right next career step.  He had the chance to interview with some leading agencies—one in New York City and one in Boston.  He sent letters, daily, to firms across the country.  He brought so much patience to the process, so much ingenuity and dignity, so much of himself.  He asked for nothing from anyone, sold himself on his own merits, did it well.  Several weeks ago he found a right opportunity.  And then he waited for the door to open.



This morning we learned that it has, and one day after Labor Day, our son will be headed off to work, from his own urban apartment—handsome as all get out no matter how you look at him, strong-backed, square jawed, and happy.  I'll be here, in the suburbs, entirely glad for him.  It's that mother thing.  We know it well.



This is a photograph snatched on graduation day—Rodi and Mario, my brothers in law, and Nora, my mother-in-law.  One come from London, one from Dallas, and the lady in pink from El Salvador—all of them as happy as my husband and I were.  (My brother and his wife graciously joined us on graduation weekend as well, they are just not in this shot.)  There was so much joy that day—so much hope.  And that hope has been met with good news.



Lucky, and we know it.[image error]

The Philly.com Interview by Allie Caren, a lovely S.I. Newhouse Student

I have had this image of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications (Syracuse University) read to rock and roll for Allie Caren, who has been interning at the Philadelphia Daily News this summer, all week long.  Allie and I met on a warm day in the new Philadelphia Inquirer building a few weeks ago, and we've enjoyed a correspondence ever since then.  Between the time and I met her and the time her profile of me was published (today), a very big thing has happened to Allie:  She's been accepted to S.I. Newhouse, the premier communications school in the country, my son's alma mater, and also the alma mater of my Philomel publicist, Jessica Shoffel.  All good things, then, at Newhouse.



Allie, a million thanks for this story—for taking an interest and for telling it so well.  And sweeping good luck to you as you now enter the school of your dreams.[image error]