Beth Kephart's Blog, page 173

I love the man who loves his mother

I re-read Rick Bragg and every cell in my body is alert with affection and admiration for this man's affection and admiration.  Bragg wrote his classic memoir to put his family's story down, and to honor his mother.  He wrote with unabashed love. 



What woman doesn't love a man who unabashedly loves? 



Why don't more men understand the seductive lure of straight-up loving?



All Over but the Shoutin':

I believe I was drawn to those stories because of her; because of all the lessons my mother tried to teach me, the most important was that every life deserves a certain amount of dignity, no matter how poor or damaged the shell that carries it.  The only time I ever made her truly ashamed of me was the day I made fun of a boy from a family that was even poorer than us.  His daddy had shaved his head to cheat the lice, and I laughed at him, made fun of him, until I saw the look in my momma's eyes.



So, this story is for her, as have been, in small ways, all the stories I have ever told and the method in which I told them.

Through the window blows a mellifluous breeze.

It's all I need today.

In Leavittville: A Small Damages Conversation (and my love for Philomel)

I wanted to find a pair of cowgirl boots for my friend Caroline Leavitt, to thank her for making room for me on her roost today, but the best I could do was this sign, photographed in Nashville four years ago, which sat (you'll have to believe me) right near a cowboy/cowgirl boot store.  Why I didn't think to photograph the boots themselves is beyond me.  What is not beyond me, at this moment, is gratitude.  For Caroline's friendship.  For her own talent.  For conversations we have had in public and in private as we both journey through this writing life.  I don't even know how Caroline got an early copy of Small Damages, but she had one.  She's in the midst of writing a brand new book, and she made time to read it.  Then she asked me excellent questions, the kind of questions one who knows another well can ask.  I answered them all here.



Among the things we discussed is how much I love Philomel, and how I made my way to this great place to begin with.  I extract a small fraction of our conversation below, but hope you will visit Leavittville for more.

Philomel
is exquisite.  At Philomel I have a home.  There I have never felt like
a fringe writer, a secondary writer, a marginal,
will-she-please-fit-a-category, we’ll-get-to-you-when-we-get-to-you
writer.  Michael Green, Philomel’s president, is a most generous person,
and correspondent.  Tamra—beautiful, intelligent, thoughtful,
embracing—approached the editing of this book, the design of its cover,
and the preparation of it for the world with the greatest care, and in
the process we became great friends.  Jessica Shoffel, a wildly
wonderful and innovative publicist, wrote me a note I’ll never forget
after she read the book and her devotion to getting the word out has
been unflagging, sensational.  The sales team got in touch a long time
ago and has stayed in touch.  And on and on.  



But
no, I never knew I would shine.  I don’t think of myself as a diamond
or a star.  I never think in those terms.  I just keep writing my heart
out.  And when you are collaborating with a house like Philomel, when
you are given room, when your questions are answered, when you are given
a chance, there are possibilities.

at my mother's grave: this memory keeps

From time to time I visit my mother's grave—drive to Valley Forge Park, park in the shade by the Washington cathedral, and go down the hill and around to the left, and up another hill.  Deer are often standing in the woods just past her stone.  Little Alex of Alex's Lemonade Stand rests just two stones to the right. The church chimes sing a song.  (I always wait long enough for the song.)



During one of my very first trips to my mother's grave, I carried this ornamental instrument, not quite an oboe, but close enough.  We had all sung to my mother in her final days, Christmas songs and hymns, and this delicate piece felt symbolic, lodged, emblematic of my brother's loved wind songs. The earth at Valley Forge has been snowed over, flooded, hailed, gusted, and baked in the years since.  My father has planted new fringes of flowers.  Deer have stuck their noses close, but somehow the reedy instrument is undaunted.  I found it again, just last week, when I went to say hello.



This memory keeps.

a sort of unbelievable Small Damages review

I try to keep my head down, to keep working or reading, or thinking or being—and not to dwell over responses to a book that cannot now be changed in any fashion (unless I go all trickworthy during the paperback process, and I would never do that).  And sometimes people like a book and sometimes people don't, and you just have to go with the flow.  You have to keep flowing.



This morning, however, my friend Alyson Hagy wrote me an email that I will always treasure.  She shares my love of place, of depth, of landscape, of birds, and when she talks I listen, I learn.  And this afternoon, I stopped again—was stopped—by Meghan Miller of Forever Young Adult (she calls herself an erstwhile librarian; I can't believe there's anything erstwhile about her).  She has put together a review of Small Damages reviews here; she's even cast my movie; she's brought me Emma Stone; she's set the table.  I cannot let this pass.  I cannot let it go.  I don't want to be tedious or all about me, but:



This is remarkable. I have to thank her.



The review, titled "I've Waited Years For A Book Like This" can be found in its entirety here.



Some of the (many) words that made me smile here.  Note to Meghan:  Kenzie will be your BFF anytime.

Kenzie is marvelous. She's magnificent. She has both an artist's
perception of the world and a teenager's self-absorbed blindness;
Kenzie's not mean or selfish, but it takes time for her to see past her
own (admittedly huge) concerns and sympathize with others. But she's
funny and kind, and she really does care, and I'd love to carefully wrap
my arm around her and help her heal, because I think she's definite BFF
material.

Where Things Come Back/John Corey Whaley: Reflections

How much do any of us need to know about a book before we decide to make it our own? I cannot predict myself.  I'll buy a book on a whim, or because I like the cover.  I'll buy it because a blogger I respect suggested that maybe I should, or because it got a rave review, or because someone I know is on the fence and I want to know how I'd decide.  I buy books in an instant, and I've been known to take my time.  But eventually I get around to buying books.



Where Things Come Back, John Corey Whaley's book, has been on my radar screen for a very long time.  It won the 2012 Printz Award and the William C. Morris YA Award.  My friend Ruta Sepetys loved it, and she doesn't go wrong.  Publishers Weekly, in its starred review, called it a "taut and well-constructed thriller."



I need to read more thrillers.



And so this weekend, while at the Chester County Book and Music Company with my friends Kate Walton, Amy King, and Joanne Fritz, I asked Joanne (who happens to work at CCBM) if she could locate a copy of Whaley's famous book.  There are more than 28,000 square feet at CCBM, but Joanne, being a whiz, returned in a second, book in hand.  Yesterday I lay on a couch and read.



Everyone knows how happy I am when authors take risk.  When they write outside category, defy logic, or dare to craft something we have not quite seen before.  Where Things Come Back is one of those books—nearly uncategorize-able (I'm not sure I'd call it a thriller), never super eager to broadcast its ambitions, willing to take some time and to confuse readers, even, so that it can eventually make its point and (this is important) have its fun.  This is a story in which many seemingly disparate parts do ultimately make a whole.  A brand of religion is involved, a probably extinct bird, a kidnapping, some insanity, best friends, young divorce, misdirected prosleytizing, and the angel Gabriel.  Gabriel is also the kid brother of our narrator.  Some people (in the novel) get the two confused.



I admire the time Whaley takes with this book, the no-hurry he is in to explain all these parts, or to promise us cohesion.  His narrator is so likable that we're going for this ride.  The story is so unusual that we stay.  The suspense here—the thrill—is seeing if Whaley is actually going to full this off.



No spoiler here:  he does.



There are words today, for all of us.  I quote them here.  Then I encourage you to go to my friend Kate Walton's blog and read her plea for greater kindness, for less aloneness.  We should all print her piece and keep it near.



From Whaley:

... I wanted to be offered help from people because they cared about me, not because they felt some strange social obligation to do so.  I wanted the world to sit back, listen up, and let me explain to it that when someone is sad and hopeless, the last thing they need to feel is that they are the only ones in the world with that feeling.

Guesting at Dear Reader: on the virtues of patience, a teen book club pick, and a Small Damages giveaway

Today I'm honored to be filling in for Suzanne Beecher, the creator of that vast and wonderful book site, Dear Reader.  She's on vacation, building a tree house with her four grandchildren.  I, in my essay, am reflecting on patience, or rather, how writing Small Damages over such a long period of time taught me one of the most important things I now know about books. 



Small Damages has been chosen by Dear Reader as the featured title in the Dear Readers Teen Book Club for the week of September 3, 2012.  I would love for you to participate.



In the meantime, three copies of Small Damages are being given away this week.  Just hop on over here, to the Dear Reader site, for more information.


Thank you, Dear Reader!

in remembrance of my beautiful neighbor, George William Shaw

Thursday afternoon, as readers of this blog know, my neighbor Jane arrived with the heartbreaking news that our mutual neighbor George had quite suddenly entered the final chapter of his magnificent life.  Early this morning, I woke with a start, sensing that something was gone.  A few hours later, the devastating news:  the beautiful, witty, eloquent, elegant George William Shaw had slipped away.



How I will miss him.  How deeply we all will—his wife, his children, his grandchildren, his family near and far, these neighbors, this very neighborhood.  Theirs is a corner house—essential, pivotal, a nexus.  George, with Shirley, worked the peonies and the potted plants in their garden, made room for new green things beneath their prize-worthy cherry tree.  George, with Shirley, held picnics for their grandchildren, hailed the proud carriages of the Devon Horse Show, wore sherbet-colored shirts to block parties (never matching, always complementary), and, before all that, before I even moved in, Shirley and George were (everyone speaks of it) extending themselves toward every child on the block.  Teaching one baseball and another to love tomatoes and another the power of personally designed and delivered nicknames. 



George liked to fly, he liked to travel, he had an engineer's intelligence, he was excellently good at laughter.  He liked to grill and once he (together with Shirley) cooked up a scheme designed to get my reluctant-in-the-kitchen husband to discover the power of cooking with live flames.  (Note to George and Shirley:  my husband, on the rare and happy occasion, now lights up his grill, thanks to you.)  Jokingly George would complain that my river book, Flow, had too many big words, even though we both knew he owned more words than I did.  He'd kid me about my strange writer life but I knew (you could always tell with George) that he cared, that he was asking me questions because he wanted actual answers.  "Hey, George," I would call out as I passed by, at least once each week, and he'd always wave back, tossing out some grand witticism, and I'd always be happier than I had been just thirty seconds before.



I live in an exceptional place, among people who define the word community. Look, for example, at the second photograph above, snapped one afternoon when I was on my way home from Penn.  It was the neighbors bearing a surprise cake for George's 80th birthday, like rogue carollers in summer.  It was George and Shirley in their bright colors, full of grace and love.

To you, George, and to all of us who loved you.

self promotion? friendship? what do we really want, as writers?

I'm going to be downright honest with you.  Launching a book prickles me over.  I hail from failed Girl Scout Cookies sales roots, after all.  I ripple with panic (more than a pebble's toss worth) every time I have to price a corporate project (and that's my business, my family's livelihood).  I send announcement e-mails out about my books in full-force cringe.  I am graciously invited into bookstores and then apologize to any friend who might want to come.  I'm sure you're busy, I'll say.  Don't feel you have to come.



It's an itchy enterprise, this book thing.  I want my books to succeed, and I especially want Small Damages to succeed because I am working with such exceptional people at Philomel and I cannot let them down.  I worry about unhappy reviews and reviewers for their sake.  I worry about sales because people I love have believed in me, and I want to deliver for them.



Still, I struggle with self-promotion.  I struggle to find balance.  I want to look out, beyond myself— reporting on the books of others (only the books I love, obviously, for I am not quite sure what any blogger gains from reporting on books that were not loved), reflecting on the world at large, honoring neighbors, children, family, friends.  I want to connect in a very real way with people.  I want to generate positivity against the dark clouds of 2012—the heat of summer, the terror in a theater, the buried secrets of a certain university and an assistant football coach, the final ebbing away of loved ones.



Yesterday, as you know from the identical picture in the previous-to-this-one post, I launched Small Damages at Chester County Book and Music Company, a store that brought us all so much for three full decades but is now on a month-to-month lease.  It is the Kindle, not the economy in general, that some believe hurt this gigantic independent. The Kindle, a machine.  Bookstores are about community.  Machines most often aren't.  We writers and readers are losing, in CCBM, a glowing, active hearth, and we will be so much the poorer for this.



Yesterday was a Saturday in mid-summer.  I am who I am, no actual rock star (despite my pumpkin-dashed-with-paprika pants).  Nonetheless, A.S. King drove all the way from where she lives (I call it a castle, she swears that it isn't) and K.M. Walton flew in from down the road (on fairy wings, with sparkle), and Joanne Fritz sat among us, and we talked, until a teen reader and her mom and, then, two friends joined in.  Maybe some people would want to be surrounded by crowds at a book launch.  I could not have been happier than this—the intimacy of the conversation, the honest exchange, the talk that went on and on until Amy and Kate and I looked at our respective time-announcing gadgets and realized that dinner in our households was about to begin.  Amy, Kate, and I are writers first.  We live the writing life.  We had stories to tell, no bravada behind which to hide, no desire to be anything but ourselves.  We loved our teen reader and her mom for encouraging a life with books.  We loved Joanne and CCBM for making room for us there.  We loved the two best friends who went home armed with their own piles of books.  We loved spending time not wanting to be, but being.



I signed my very first copy of Small Damages to a teen reader named Julia.  I laughed until I ached with Kate and Amy.  I went home counting my luck for being in this odd but beautiful business of publishing.  And then I took a walk in the neighborhood that is home to me and felt the breeze kicking up through my hair.

at Chester County Books with A.S. King, K.M. Walton, and Julia

Thanks to Joanne Fritz for being our hostess with the mostest this afternoon at your beautiful, please-tell-us-it-will-be there-forever store.  Where else can we sit like we did and laugh long and hard, long after we stopped talking about Small Damages?  And how lucky am I that A.S. King (we'll call her Amy) and K.M. Walton (we'll call her Kate) spent this afternoon with me?



Right answer:  Extremely lucky.


And what about Julia—our teen reader?  She's something else.



I wore orange pants, just so none of us could forget this afternoon.  I know that I never will.