Beth Kephart's Blog, page 194

our brains on great literature, with the emphasis on great

Truth be told, I'm still struggling in these parts, and hence the sluggishness of my blog presence.  I do hope to regain my perky self (Was I ever perky? Is it even appropriate at my age to be perky?).  But between now and then, I would like to share two news items (both from the New York Times) that friends have sent my way.  My taste, my interests must be verging on the transparent.



Story number one:  Draft.  This is the new Times Opinionator feature that promises "essays by grammarians, historians, linguists, journalists, novelists and others on the art of writing—from the comma to the tweet to the novel—and why a well-crafted sentence matters more than ever in the digital age."  Jhumpa Lahiri's gorgeous piece "My Life's Sentences" recalled, for the ever-lovely Melissa Sarno, a piece I had written here, about my obsession with the construct.  (Thank you, Melissa, for making me famous today.)



Story number two:  Your Brain on Fiction.  This Annie Murphy Paul essay on reading and the effects it has on our brains reinforces what those of us who have defended lies and lie telling (well, we have defended novels) have been saying all along:  "Reading great literature...enlarges and improves us as human beings."



I personally think the "great" matters in that Annie Murphy Paul essay.  Which takes me straight back to my obsession with crafting fine sentences.  Not easy sentences.  Not obvious ones.  Not the ones you've seen plenty of times before.  But the ones that make us think.



Thank you, Melissa, Mandy, Paul, and Bonnie for making sure I see the good stuff.  Thank you, Melissa, for pairing me with Jhumpa herself.[image error]

The Heart of Haiku/Jane Hirshfield: it moved me

There's no accounting for how much I loved Jane Hirshfield's Kindle Single, The Heart of Haiku.  Part biography, part exegesis, this beautiful essay took me to a deep and sweltering place.  Yes, it's about the 17th century artist Basho—about his wandering, about his work.  But it is also about living, breathing, seeing, something I'm not convinced that I do enough of.



It's short.  It's the price of a coffee.  It will take two hours of your life to read, and it will change you.  Buy The Heart of Haiku. 



An excerpt:

... Basho's work as a whole awakens us to the necessary permeability of all to all.  Awareness of the mind's movements makes clear that it is the mind's nature to move.  Feeling within ourselves the lives of others (people, creatures, plants, and things) who share this world is what allows us to feel as we do at all.  First comes the sight of a block of sea slugs frozen while still alive, then the sharp, kinesthetic comprehension of the inseparability of the suffering of one from the suffering of all. First comes hearing the sound of one bird singing, then the recognition that solitude can carry its own form of beauty, able to turn pain into depth.

a wonderful night at Musehouse

Musehouse: A Center for the Literary Arts is everything it promises to be—"a home for writers of varying ages and levels of experience in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and scriptwriting through workshops, conferences, readings, and special events."  Let's focus on that word home—the welcoming front porch, the long living room, the Stanley Kunitz wall art (oh, baby), the green-icing cupcakes (it being St. Patty's Day), and all those warm-hearted souls.



I first wrote about Musehouse long before I had had a chance to visit.  Last night I was honored to share the mike with April Lindner (who wrote Jane and has Catherine forthcoming) and Doug Gordon, a writer I met in 1997 when we both won a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant (along with Justin Cronin, who went on to write The Passage, among other things).



I met people last night whom I'd been hoping to meet for years, saw people I'd first met eras ago, and spoke at length with a young woman whose face I remembered from two long BEA lines.  It was a fine night, a peaceful affair. 



Many thanks to Musehouse.  To learn more about the workshops and readings that are offered there, on Germantown Avenue, please visit the web site. 

"it's the hardest thing on earth to like yourself"

From the April 2012 Vanity Fair, an interview with Julia Roberts and Mike Nichols:



V.F.:  Metamorphosis, transformation: that's what holds us, I think, in every story.



Mike: To become something better, to be less unhappy.  But it's mostly a fantasy.  It's the hardest thing on earth to like yourself, and then when you do, it's a catastrophe.  I mean, the people I know who like themselves—I don't want to see them.



V.F.: They're insufferable.



Julia:  Worse than insufferable. They're boring.

this is what happened at Body Combat

Maybe (technically speaking) going to the gym today was not the smartest move.  I'm still battling vestiges of this month-long flu and my balance is not, shall we say, terrific.  But I was missing Teresa and her Saturday morning Body Combat class at Club La Maison.  I was in need of some air-punching, knee-stomping, kick-slapping action.  And besides, it's St. Patty's Day.  Teresa is always good for a holiday.



So I went, and 45 minutes in I was breathing heavy and thinking of quitting when a woman who has been absent from among us for quite awhile appeared in the doorway, her pink cap on, her smile still bright, her fists still ready to knock some air.  She has been battling a real illness, we have been worried for her, and when we saw here there, ready to give Combat a few of her rounds, the room erupted with cheers, Teresa the loudest of all.



We go to the gym to stretch our muscles, to move our blood, to make room for an afternoon cookie—of course.  But mostly it's the camaraderie that keeps us returning.  It's Teresa in her Irish hat and tie, her stick-on tattoos, her insistence that we keep going, no matter what.



It's the courage that we find in others.

Musehouse Tomorrow Night, and an answer for those who have questioned Emmy's voice in YAMO

If I find green in my closet, I will wear green. And for those of you who are wondering, I will be reading a section from the book that I've never read aloud from before.  I'm going to be addressing—overtly—those who wonder why I chose to do something different with language after Emmy's breakdown.



(The answer:  Language was broken for her.  I was mapping, in those sections, the reconstitution of ideas and words.  I could not write the ordinary and the obvious because, well, mental breakdowns are neither ordinary nor obvious.)



(And besides, well:  gosh.  I think we have to take risks.)

the kid returns from the city that never sleeps

I may have had one crazy (but in so many ways beautiful) week, but I've got nothing on my son, who returned home just ahead of the midnight hour following three-and-a-half days in the City That Never Sleeps.  He had photographs.  He had stories.  He had had such a happy time.  He's asleep upstairs as I type this now.  He's asleep and dreaming.



I'm never truly whole except when he's home.  These are the last few days of his last-ever spring break.



If I don't answer my phone, you'll understand why.

Young Writers Take the Park: Teen Day in Manayunk

Young Writers Take the Park — I kind of like the sound of that.



For the initiative and the daring and the perseverance, we have The Spiral Bookcase to thank—that new independent in Manayunk, PA.



We'll be joined that day by the greats—Susan Campbell Bartoletti, A.S. King, April Lindner, and Elizabeth Mosier.  We'll be serenaded by local bands Melrose Q and Evan's Orphanage.  And we'll have teen writers from throughout the area on hand for a special writing workshop, not to mention a special celebration of the winners of a teen writing contest.



(I'll be there, too, moseying around.)



Please click on the poster above and consider joining us.  Please feel free to spread the news.

There I was, sitting beside John Green and right near Christine Hinwood and Ruta Sepetys

... I mean — there was SMALL DAMAGES sitting alongside the work of Those Great Writers (at the Public Library Association meeting in Philadelphia), and of course I had to take a picture, because, seriously, what dream am I having that my book would be right there, in that glorious Penguin mix?  Of course, we all do know that Penguin rules.



When I wasn't busy being starstruck by my own shelf position (I hope you all do know that I am kidding; I am biologically predetermined never to be self-starstruck), I was taking photographs of the real stars—people like Carl Hiaasen and Gayle Forman, pictured here.  I was also running around looking for my dear friend Siobhan Vivian, whose THE LIST is due out soon (check back here for more on that soon).  Siobhan and I never found each other (sadness and sobs) but we got to talk for a long time on the phone as I took the train home.  Making the day even more special.

when you read the media letter for your book, and it is perfect

A funny thing happens when you utterly trust the people you work with:  You don't ask any questions.  You just, well, trust.  And so it had never occurred to me to ask about the press release for SMALL DAMAGES or if, indeed, the book (which won't appear in bookstores until July 19th) was already making its way through media channels.



But yesterday, while chatting with the utterly delightful Jessica Shoffel (a Penguin publicist) about many things, she stopped and glanced toward a corner of her office, where she said the ARCS of SMALL DAMAGES were piled.  Oh and by the way, she said, here's the letter that I'm sending out with your book.



It wasn't until I was on my way home, on the train (after an enormously memorable lunch with Tamra Tuller), that I remembered the letter and thought to read it through.  And my goodness.  My absolute goodness.  What a letter it is.  Jessica happens to be a graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, the top-ranked communications program in the country, and I am certain (beyond certain) that she graduated at the top of her magazine/journalism class.



Because her letter is a work of art.  And I'm one lucky author.