Marcia Calhoun Forecki's Blog, page 3
April 13, 2013
“Back Porch Writer” on Blog Talk Radio
Ever feel that there are interesting people in the world you haven’t met yet? Allow me to introduce a truly fascinating woman, Kori Miller. She is a writer and much more.
Kori is a also a wife, mom, martial artist and a tea merchant in Fremont, Nebraska. Her personal essays and short stories appear in Fine Lines literary journal. She and her husband operate a tea shop called The Tea Trove, which specializes in hand-blended teas, tisanes and lemonades. (Literary detective Hercule Poirot is fond of his tisane, as we all know.)
Kori hosts a weekly Blog Talk Radio show for writers, about writers and writing. (Could there be a more interesting topic?) “Back Porch Writer” airs each Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. CST. You can hear the interviews any time by going to Back Porch Writer or Blog Radio. On April 9, 2013, Kori interviewed Jerry Schnitzer, author of My Floating Grandmother, and co-author with me of the medical thriller, Blood of the White Bear, due out later this year. Give a listen. You’ll be entertained and inspired.
Kori is a also a wife, mom, martial artist and a tea merchant in Fremont, Nebraska. Her personal essays and short stories appear in Fine Lines literary journal. She and her husband operate a tea shop called The Tea Trove, which specializes in hand-blended teas, tisanes and lemonades. (Literary detective Hercule Poirot is fond of his tisane, as we all know.)
Kori hosts a weekly Blog Talk Radio show for writers, about writers and writing. (Could there be a more interesting topic?) “Back Porch Writer” airs each Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. CST. You can hear the interviews any time by going to Back Porch Writer or Blog Radio. On April 9, 2013, Kori interviewed Jerry Schnitzer, author of My Floating Grandmother, and co-author with me of the medical thriller, Blood of the White Bear, due out later this year. Give a listen. You’ll be entertained and inspired.
January 24, 2013
Review of 1861:THE CIVIL WAR AWAKENING by Adam Goodheart
1861: The Civil War Awakening is a focused survey of events throughout the United States in the year leading up to the eve of the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run), or roughly the autumn of 1860 through summer of 1861.
Two things that make U.S. history as taught in elementary and high schools so unrelatable are the lack of personal stories of ordinary people, and political bias, where focus is on presidents, heroes, wars and the idea of an American (white) exceptionalism. In books such as Tim Egan’s The Worst Hard Times, we see a panorama of what was happening throughout the country, to people of all strata of society, who impacted, or were impacted by, the events of the Dust bowl in the Oklahoma panhandle. John Barry masterfully uses this panoramic/zoomed-in focus Rising Tide, about the 1927 flood of the Mississippi River, and The Great Influenza, about the 1918 pandemic. Adam Goodheart's 1861: The Civil War Awakening is a book in this narrative history tradition, and I recommend it as one of the best.
Reading Adam Goodheart’s book is effortless because is such a good storyteller. The research notes are there, and they gave me confidence, but what compelled me to lose sleep was the narrative. Goodheart sprinkles the stories with humor administered by a delicate hand. In the closing hours of the Thirty-Sixth Congress, the last before President Lincoln’s first term in office, Representative tom Corwin of Ohio proposed a Constitutional amendment. It would have been the Thirteenth Amendment. Ironically, that amendment was used to end slavery. Rep. Corwin’s amendment would have barred Congress from ever interfering with “domestic institutions,” i.e., slavery, in any state, and forbade its own repeat in perpetuity. Goodheart concludes this paragraph: “What more could the South want?”
On the subject of fugitive slaves, Goodheart credits General Benjamin Franklin Butler with the concept of slaves as contraband of war. In Gen. Butler’s photographs, he looks rather like a sleep-deprived Andy Sipowitz, hardly the creative thinker who devised a way that fugitive slaves could be detained and used in the service of the Union Army rather than returned to their masters, as required by the Fugitive Slave Act. When three fugitive slaves appeared at Fortress Monroe, having escaped from work on a Confederate battery, Gen. Butler realizes that “[T]he fugitives had just offered him some highly useful military intelligence. The enemy had been deploying them for offensive purposes - to construct a battery aimed directly at his fort, no less - and no doubt would put them straight back to work if recaptured, with time off only for a good sound beating.”
Adam Goodheart did me a personal service in 1861. He answered certain questions I had long held, about the Zouaves and about Lincoln’s election. During my years of reading about the Civil War, and I confess to be at most a casual student of the period, I never understood who, or what, were the Zouaves. I saw pictures of their flamboyant uniforms, and wondered why anyone would go into battle dressed so as to be a certain target. In 1861, we learn about Elmer Ellsworth, a somewhat geeky young man who joined a local militia in Chicago, The Cadets of the National Guard. These drilling groups were popular all over the country for building up young men, and attracting the attention of young ladies.
In the 1850’s Ellsworth worked with a fencing instructor who had served with the Zouaves, an elite European fighting force. Ellsworth brought the Zouave training and discipline to his cadets, and drilled them into a sort of performance group in colorful costumes. I imagine a kind of nineteenth century Circ du Soleil for its combination of showmanship and physical accomplishment. Ellsworth met Abraham Lincoln before either man came to his full ascendancy. Lincoln treated the young Ellsworth like another of his sons. In May, after the fall of Fort Sumter and before young men fell by Manassas River, Ellsworth led Zouaves to Alexandria, Virginia, where he was shot dead after bringing down the Confederate flag over a hotel. His body lay in state in the East Room of the White House. Lincoln grieved deeply for his young friend. Goodheart writes: “Even close friends of the Lincoln family were afraid, for a long time afterward, to talk about Ellsworth in front of the president, who sometimes wept at the mention of his name.” Long before the lengthy casualty lists became commonplace, Lincoln understood “the squalid brutality of civil war.”
Today, we suffer through literally non-stop political campaigns for presidency. Goodheart has finally helped me understand how Abraham Lincoln, in a slate of four candidates, as a member of a fledgling political party, in a state west of Ohio, won the election in1860. Lincoln himself did not campaign, there was no mass media or sound bites; indeed, he didn’t leave Springfield. There was a campaign, and it was carried out by the Wide Awakes. These were groups of thousands of young men, all over the country, who marched in support of Lincoln’s candidacy. The Wide Awakes marched in black, oil skin capes and carried torches which reflected off of them. They marched by the thousands, and earned their name when marching late one night and someone commented that they certainly were wide awake. So, it was not a celestial hand that guided votes to elect Lincoln, but it was marching and “speechifying” on his behalf, by thousands of people, all over the country. They even sold Wide Awake merchandise.
Finally, I must thank Adam Goodheart for including the events in the western part of the country, and particularly my home state of Missouri. Many of the best books and documentaries about the Civil War mention the war in Missouri in footnotes. Although no “major” battles were fought there, with thousands killed in an afternoon, Missouri was the only state which was under martial law for the entirety of the war. It was the only state where the duly elected state government was kicked out of the state and a governor and legislature supporting the union put in place by the federal government. Western Missouri was the only place apart from the path of Sherman’s march to the sea, where civilians were put out of their homes and forced to leave all of their possessions to be stolen or destroyed by Union soldiers.
1861: The Civil War Awakening should be required, perhaps forced, reading for every member of Congress, not only for their general edification, but to demonstrate the consequences of doing nothing. Perhaps some Senator or Congressman, holding the floor to an empty house in the dead of night, will read into the record for the C-Span cameras this quotation from Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky: “We are about to adjourn. We have done nothing. Even the Senate of the United States, beholding this great ruin around them, beholding dismemberment and revolution going on, and civil war threatened as the result, have been able to do nothing; we have done absolutely nothing.” It is ever thus.
1861: The Civil War Awakening
Two things that make U.S. history as taught in elementary and high schools so unrelatable are the lack of personal stories of ordinary people, and political bias, where focus is on presidents, heroes, wars and the idea of an American (white) exceptionalism. In books such as Tim Egan’s The Worst Hard Times, we see a panorama of what was happening throughout the country, to people of all strata of society, who impacted, or were impacted by, the events of the Dust bowl in the Oklahoma panhandle. John Barry masterfully uses this panoramic/zoomed-in focus Rising Tide, about the 1927 flood of the Mississippi River, and The Great Influenza, about the 1918 pandemic. Adam Goodheart's 1861: The Civil War Awakening is a book in this narrative history tradition, and I recommend it as one of the best.
Reading Adam Goodheart’s book is effortless because is such a good storyteller. The research notes are there, and they gave me confidence, but what compelled me to lose sleep was the narrative. Goodheart sprinkles the stories with humor administered by a delicate hand. In the closing hours of the Thirty-Sixth Congress, the last before President Lincoln’s first term in office, Representative tom Corwin of Ohio proposed a Constitutional amendment. It would have been the Thirteenth Amendment. Ironically, that amendment was used to end slavery. Rep. Corwin’s amendment would have barred Congress from ever interfering with “domestic institutions,” i.e., slavery, in any state, and forbade its own repeat in perpetuity. Goodheart concludes this paragraph: “What more could the South want?”
On the subject of fugitive slaves, Goodheart credits General Benjamin Franklin Butler with the concept of slaves as contraband of war. In Gen. Butler’s photographs, he looks rather like a sleep-deprived Andy Sipowitz, hardly the creative thinker who devised a way that fugitive slaves could be detained and used in the service of the Union Army rather than returned to their masters, as required by the Fugitive Slave Act. When three fugitive slaves appeared at Fortress Monroe, having escaped from work on a Confederate battery, Gen. Butler realizes that “[T]he fugitives had just offered him some highly useful military intelligence. The enemy had been deploying them for offensive purposes - to construct a battery aimed directly at his fort, no less - and no doubt would put them straight back to work if recaptured, with time off only for a good sound beating.”
Adam Goodheart did me a personal service in 1861. He answered certain questions I had long held, about the Zouaves and about Lincoln’s election. During my years of reading about the Civil War, and I confess to be at most a casual student of the period, I never understood who, or what, were the Zouaves. I saw pictures of their flamboyant uniforms, and wondered why anyone would go into battle dressed so as to be a certain target. In 1861, we learn about Elmer Ellsworth, a somewhat geeky young man who joined a local militia in Chicago, The Cadets of the National Guard. These drilling groups were popular all over the country for building up young men, and attracting the attention of young ladies.
In the 1850’s Ellsworth worked with a fencing instructor who had served with the Zouaves, an elite European fighting force. Ellsworth brought the Zouave training and discipline to his cadets, and drilled them into a sort of performance group in colorful costumes. I imagine a kind of nineteenth century Circ du Soleil for its combination of showmanship and physical accomplishment. Ellsworth met Abraham Lincoln before either man came to his full ascendancy. Lincoln treated the young Ellsworth like another of his sons. In May, after the fall of Fort Sumter and before young men fell by Manassas River, Ellsworth led Zouaves to Alexandria, Virginia, where he was shot dead after bringing down the Confederate flag over a hotel. His body lay in state in the East Room of the White House. Lincoln grieved deeply for his young friend. Goodheart writes: “Even close friends of the Lincoln family were afraid, for a long time afterward, to talk about Ellsworth in front of the president, who sometimes wept at the mention of his name.” Long before the lengthy casualty lists became commonplace, Lincoln understood “the squalid brutality of civil war.”
Today, we suffer through literally non-stop political campaigns for presidency. Goodheart has finally helped me understand how Abraham Lincoln, in a slate of four candidates, as a member of a fledgling political party, in a state west of Ohio, won the election in1860. Lincoln himself did not campaign, there was no mass media or sound bites; indeed, he didn’t leave Springfield. There was a campaign, and it was carried out by the Wide Awakes. These were groups of thousands of young men, all over the country, who marched in support of Lincoln’s candidacy. The Wide Awakes marched in black, oil skin capes and carried torches which reflected off of them. They marched by the thousands, and earned their name when marching late one night and someone commented that they certainly were wide awake. So, it was not a celestial hand that guided votes to elect Lincoln, but it was marching and “speechifying” on his behalf, by thousands of people, all over the country. They even sold Wide Awake merchandise.
Finally, I must thank Adam Goodheart for including the events in the western part of the country, and particularly my home state of Missouri. Many of the best books and documentaries about the Civil War mention the war in Missouri in footnotes. Although no “major” battles were fought there, with thousands killed in an afternoon, Missouri was the only state which was under martial law for the entirety of the war. It was the only state where the duly elected state government was kicked out of the state and a governor and legislature supporting the union put in place by the federal government. Western Missouri was the only place apart from the path of Sherman’s march to the sea, where civilians were put out of their homes and forced to leave all of their possessions to be stolen or destroyed by Union soldiers.
1861: The Civil War Awakening should be required, perhaps forced, reading for every member of Congress, not only for their general edification, but to demonstrate the consequences of doing nothing. Perhaps some Senator or Congressman, holding the floor to an empty house in the dead of night, will read into the record for the C-Span cameras this quotation from Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky: “We are about to adjourn. We have done nothing. Even the Senate of the United States, beholding this great ruin around them, beholding dismemberment and revolution going on, and civil war threatened as the result, have been able to do nothing; we have done absolutely nothing.” It is ever thus.
1861: The Civil War Awakening
December 22, 2012
My Three Christmas Wishes
* I wish Christmas guests would stay in the traditional guest areas: the living room, dining room, kitchen, powder room. If they want to throw in a load of laundry, then fine. What I don’t want is a repeat of last year, when my sister went into my bedroom to “check her email” on my computer. There on the treadmill hung a navy blue Pendeleton sweater I had bought for her gift, but decided to keep. Nestled in a box under the tree for her was a perfectly nice 100% acrylic crew neck cable knit. One arm was stretched out a little from when I pulled it out of the bottom a pile of extra smalls. Someone had obviously hidden the extra large there for later purchase. “Oh, this is lovely. Just my color,” my sister said when she saw the better sweater. What could I do? I sent her to the store for extra crescent rolls and switched the sweaters.
* I wish people would learn to pronounce the Christmas plant (it’s not a flower). It’s poinsettia - four syllables, not three. I wonder why a tropical plant was chosen to represent Christmas in the United States, when we are all wishing for a winter white holiday. The poinsettia is a tropical plant. The Christmas tree, appropriately, is an variety of pine or plastic, impervious to weather. A poinsettia requires direct sun. When sunlight is not available in the Midwest (from October 16 through March 3), I have use a plant light to keep it alive. One more thing I have remember, during an already busy season. I do love the plant, however; and it is poison to cats, so there’s that.
* I wish home-made holiday treats were not valued so highly. Doesn’t it just make sense to leave the cooking and candy making to the experts? People who do it as a business and know what they are doing? Sure, most of the cookies in those tins from “Denmark” were made in 2011, but they fit perfectly into those little paper cups. When I make chocolate chip cookies there isn’t a round one in the bunch. I get tired of rolling out the gingerbread men and the last pan is always just six large gingerbread mounds. I call them the gingerbread men’s graves, but it never gets the laugh I expect. As long as Sara Lee, Marie Callender and the Pillsbury Doughboy are on the job, let's entrust my holiday baking to them.
Bonus wishes: Rest to the worried, peace to the frightened, love to the lonely, and hope to us all!
* I wish people would learn to pronounce the Christmas plant (it’s not a flower). It’s poinsettia - four syllables, not three. I wonder why a tropical plant was chosen to represent Christmas in the United States, when we are all wishing for a winter white holiday. The poinsettia is a tropical plant. The Christmas tree, appropriately, is an variety of pine or plastic, impervious to weather. A poinsettia requires direct sun. When sunlight is not available in the Midwest (from October 16 through March 3), I have use a plant light to keep it alive. One more thing I have remember, during an already busy season. I do love the plant, however; and it is poison to cats, so there’s that.
* I wish home-made holiday treats were not valued so highly. Doesn’t it just make sense to leave the cooking and candy making to the experts? People who do it as a business and know what they are doing? Sure, most of the cookies in those tins from “Denmark” were made in 2011, but they fit perfectly into those little paper cups. When I make chocolate chip cookies there isn’t a round one in the bunch. I get tired of rolling out the gingerbread men and the last pan is always just six large gingerbread mounds. I call them the gingerbread men’s graves, but it never gets the laugh I expect. As long as Sara Lee, Marie Callender and the Pillsbury Doughboy are on the job, let's entrust my holiday baking to them.
Bonus wishes: Rest to the worried, peace to the frightened, love to the lonely, and hope to us all!
December 7, 2012
This Just In: World Not Ending on 12/21/12
No, the world is not ending on December 21, 2012. The Maya calendar is circular, fitting their conception of time. On 12/21/12 (or 13.13.13 in the Maya long count), we start the calculations over. It's like the odometer on your car turning back to zero after 100,000 miles. I actually know quite a bit about the Maya calendar (except for the math involved), because I read. That's why I'm not afraid. Knowledge is not only power, it's security. Maybe that's a lesson for this season: We become more safe when we share what we know and are open to considering what others before us and around us have learned and writen down for us.
Here's another thing to consider about December 21st. Not only will the world not end, but the days will actually begin to grow longer - in terms of daylight, that is. What a wonderful thing that is! Even though winter - and in my part of the country, the worst of the winter weather - usually comes after 12/21, every day we receive a little more light.
Since Mother Earth isn't going to destroy us, maybe we should do her a solid, and start taking care of our home. Maybe pollute a little less, recycle a little more. Get active for the Earth. Maybe worry less about who caused global warming and a little more about how to preserve the only habitable place we have at the moment. Remember when you and your sibling were fighting over the last of the chocolate milk and spilled it all over the floor. Mom asked, "Who spilled the milk?" The two of you pointed fingers at each other, cried, yelled, stomped. Meanwhile, the milk was flowing slowly but surely across the kitchen floor. What did Mom say? "I don't care who spilled it, you both can clean it up."
Finally, the delay of the demise of the planet means Christmas will come this year, and you need to fill some stockings. May I recommend the gift of reading! Naturally, I offer my book, Hurricane Blues and Other Stories, available now for under $12. Order Here At one story a night, this collection of short fiction will give your friends fourteen winter nights of good reading. That's less than $$1.00 per night! Aren't your friends worth a dollar? I know some of mine are.
To readers and writers everywhere -- HAVE A HAPPY, HEALTH, SAFE AND LITERARY HOLIDAY!
Here's another thing to consider about December 21st. Not only will the world not end, but the days will actually begin to grow longer - in terms of daylight, that is. What a wonderful thing that is! Even though winter - and in my part of the country, the worst of the winter weather - usually comes after 12/21, every day we receive a little more light.
Since Mother Earth isn't going to destroy us, maybe we should do her a solid, and start taking care of our home. Maybe pollute a little less, recycle a little more. Get active for the Earth. Maybe worry less about who caused global warming and a little more about how to preserve the only habitable place we have at the moment. Remember when you and your sibling were fighting over the last of the chocolate milk and spilled it all over the floor. Mom asked, "Who spilled the milk?" The two of you pointed fingers at each other, cried, yelled, stomped. Meanwhile, the milk was flowing slowly but surely across the kitchen floor. What did Mom say? "I don't care who spilled it, you both can clean it up."
Finally, the delay of the demise of the planet means Christmas will come this year, and you need to fill some stockings. May I recommend the gift of reading! Naturally, I offer my book, Hurricane Blues and Other Stories, available now for under $12. Order Here At one story a night, this collection of short fiction will give your friends fourteen winter nights of good reading. That's less than $$1.00 per night! Aren't your friends worth a dollar? I know some of mine are.
To readers and writers everywhere -- HAVE A HAPPY, HEALTH, SAFE AND LITERARY HOLIDAY!
November 16, 2012
Review: Vietnam Reflections by Steve McKenna
Vietnam Reflections is a collection of stories, essays and confessions of the author’s tour of duty in Vietnam. Steve McKenna spent 1967 and 1968 in the Central Highlands as an infantry soldier, and has traveled back numerous times over the years since. Steve returned to reconnect fractured families, to recover remains of lost friends, and to redeem what was taken from him as a man much too young to have lost so much.
Steve’s writing is stripped down to the essentials. This minimalism reminds the reader of the skills of an infantryman on patrol. A grunt on patrol had to go in boldly, act quickly and judge precisely when to move or be still. Steve writes the same way, using only the language necessary to tell a story honestly and clearly. It is powerful communication of a remarkable and moving story. Steve’s introspection is incredibly brave. He writes about how he felt upon seeing mutilated bodies of American soldiers, “At that moment, we were capable of doing anything to anyone.”
The collected memories in Vietnam Reflections form a path to forgiveness. Ultimately, Steve learns he can not judge anyone for what they did in the jungle, but the last person he forgives is himself. “We used the dark side, pretending and convincing ourselves that everything we did was justified and right. To survive, we appealed to the evil within each of us.”
This book is for readers who lived through the war, and for those who may wonder why their fathers and grandfathers have never been able to liberate themselves completely from that experience.
Vietnam Reflections
October 24, 2012
The Seventh Commandment
Mrs. Meyers’ class of young seraphim met in the basement of the Forest Avenue Baptist Church. The walls of my Sunday School classroom were cement blocks, painted creamy white. Jesus looked down on the eight-year-olds from over Mrs. Meyers’ tight grey curls. The children crowded around Jesus in the framed picture were plump cheeked representatives of all the major races: red and yellow, black and white.
“This month, we are going to talk about the Ten Commandments. We’re going to learn all ten. When you can recite all of the Ten Commandments, you will get this book mark with a gold tassel. Isn’t it lovely?”
The bookmark carried a picture of Jesus holding a lamb on one side, and the commandments one through ten, inclusive, on the other side. It occurred to me with the bookmark, we did not need to memorize the Ten Commandments. We could simply refer to the bookmark. Mrs. Meyers said, “You must write the words of the Lord on your heart.”
Mrs. Meyers began by explaining the commandments:
(1) No other God before God. That was an easy one. I had never heard about any other gods, before or after.
(2) No graven images. This one I thought referred to cemetery markers like my grandfather got when he died, with his name, date of birth and death and a carved lily. Mrs. Meyers said it meant something different, and that we as Baptists didn‘t have to worry about it. The idols it referred to were mostly found in Catholic churches.
(3) Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. This meant no cursing, regardless of what our parents or neighbors might say, since being adults they were subject to more stress than children, and God understood when they made the occasional slip.
(4) Keep the Sabbath holy. This meant going to church on Sunday morning instead of sleeping late or reading the funny papers.
(5) Honor your father and mother. This one was obvious. Parents controlled the supply of food and the car keys. Did Jesus really need to make this one a commandment?
(6) Don’t kill. No trouble following this one.
(7) Don’t commit adultery.
(8) Don’t steal. Apparently this included little things like hair barrettes or Barbie doll outfits if they belonged to your sister. You were expected to return them, even if you found them under the bed or behind the couch.
(9) Don’t lie. This mostly applied to not telling the truth to parents and teachers, including Sunday School teachers. Fibbing to younger siblings was allowed under a footnote, or so my older brother informed me.
(10) Don’t covet. This was an old-time word for being selfish. It meant don’t be selfish for toys your friends had that your parents could not afford. Also, don’t beg for every new toy you see on television on Saturday mornings.
I felt that I had a reasonable chance of following all these commandments. The one that concerned me most was number seven. Mrs. Meyers had completely skipped over that one. “What does adultery mean,“ I asked.
“You should ask your parents about this one, hon,” Mrs. Meyers said.
So I did.
“Mom, what is adultery? Dad, pass the potatoes, please.”
“This is not a topic for the dinner table,” my mother said. “Who taught you that word, anyway?”
“My Sunday School teacher.”
“They shouldn’t be talking about that in the Young Seraphim class,” Mother declared.
“It’s one of the commandments. We have to learn them all,” I said.
“That’s just fine,” said my father. “You can learn them without having to talk them to death.”
“I just want to know what it means,” I said.
“Don’t whine,” said my mother.
Later, I sat on our metal glider on the front porch. I was drawing on the backs of pages from an old 1958 calendar. My father sat at the other end of the glider, listening to a baseball game on a radio. The cord from the radio was plugged into a thick orange extension cord that ran around the back of the glider and into the house. I enjoyed sitting with my father. His legs were long enough to keep the glider constantly moving. While a new pitcher was warming up, I confided in my father, “I’m afraid I might commit adultery,” I whispered.
He extended his heels and brought the glider to an immediate stop. Then he coughed, but not in a choking way; he coughed in a trying not to laugh way.
“If I do, I’ll go to hell,” I continued. “It’s not fair I have to go to hell for doing something when I could have avoided it if I knew what it was.”
I knew plenty about hell by age eight. My older brother had painted a pretty graphic picture for me. All the houses and trees were on fire, there were little devils that jabbed forks into you day and night without warning, there was no water to drink, and snakes came up through the toilets to bite you on the butt. All in all, not a place I wanted to spend an eternity, however long that might be.
My father saw I was genuinely troubled. He pulled out the comics from the newspaper and handed them to me. “Draw Dagwood for me.“ He rose from his glider and rubbed the top of my head. “Don’t worry about that commandment,“ he said. “Only adults have to worry about that one. Kids get a pass on number seven. Want to split a popsicle with me?”
After he went into the house, I turned to a new page of the calendar and began drawing Dagwood. Pogo was easier to draw, having virtually no body, but I wanted to please my father. I felt that he had been straight with me, and what he said did give me some comfort. I just might escape hell should I be fortunate enough to come to a childhood demise. But he had done nothing to assuage my curiosity. What Dad did, probably without his knowing or intending it, was give me an important clue to deciphering the mystery of adultery.
I needed a quiet place to concentrate. We lived on a dead end street. At the end were a couple of empty lots, grown up in trees and brush. I was still slightly afraid to go there by myself. My brother had seen to that. But, I felt that I needed the quiet of nature to think through something of this magnitude. Besides, sitting alone in a tree seemed a safe place to ensure that I did not inadvertently commit adultery.
I started with the word: adultery. The word adult was right there. All I had to figure out was what activity adults engaged in that children did not. I went through my parents’ daily routines in my mind like a flip book. It seemed to me that we did a lot of things together: eating, watching television, attending church three times a week, brushing teeth, taking baths, feeding the dog, making beds, hanging up clothes. Fishing was my dad’s favorite pastime, and we often went along. The kids were not allowed to go into a boat with dad and his friends. We fished from the bank. Was adultery something that happened in boats, I wondered. My brother got to fish from the boat earlier that summer, so it couldn't be that. What did adults do that kids as old as my brother did not? I was completely stumped.
An early summer breeze blew through the leaves of the maple tree. I opened a library book I brought with me. My place was marked with a Bobby pin. I imagined how beautiful my library books would look with the gold tassel of the Ten Commandments bookmark flowing over the top of the spine. I felt the silky threads between my fingers. I might have lapsed into a daydream, but for the sudden sound that startled me nearly off my branch.
Sometimes people drove down our street, not realizing that it was a dead end. They would have to turn around between the two vacant lots, and go back out. Occasionally, someone would be frustrated or mad that they had made a mistake and screeched their brakes. As I sat in the lowest fork of a little sugar maple, I heard the squeal of brakes and the rubbing of tires on pavement. This was an example of what I later learned was called insight. At the time, I thought it was a revelation from God, my reward for all the thinking I had done to figure out adultery.
My answer had come, as clear as the song of a heavenly choir. I knew the one thing that adults did that children could not do. Adults drove cars. Still, driving was a useful activity. What could be sinful about it? Adultery was quite obviously the act of hitting someone with a car.
My child’s logic dictated that the driver did not even have to kill an operator or passenger in the other car, or a pedestrian. That would have been covered in commandment number six. Was hitting a parked car an act of adultery? No, I reasoned. There wasn’t a commandment that covered property damage, so that was obviously something God thought people could work out for themselves. I had figured it out on my own: adultery was hitting a person with one’s car, whether the victim was in a vehicle or walking, resulting in injury but not death.
Oh, the relief. Adultery, I understood, was well and truly an act I could not commit as a child. Until I reached my sixteenth birthday, breaking the seventh commandment was one thing I absolutely did not have to worry about. If I died before waking, as my nightly prayer suggested the possibility, and I managed to keep my hands off my sister’s things and told the truth, Heaven was mine.
I jumped down from the maple tree, and ran home. I longed to tell my parents that I had solved the mystery of the seventh commandment. My mother was visiting a neighbor, and my father was cleaning out the dog’s pen. I could be patient. I planned the perfect way to let Mom and Dad know that I understood the seventh commandment. That evening, I asked to say grace before the meal. “God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food. And, please don’t let Daddy commit adultery when we go to Grandma’s house this weekend. Amen.”
“This month, we are going to talk about the Ten Commandments. We’re going to learn all ten. When you can recite all of the Ten Commandments, you will get this book mark with a gold tassel. Isn’t it lovely?”
The bookmark carried a picture of Jesus holding a lamb on one side, and the commandments one through ten, inclusive, on the other side. It occurred to me with the bookmark, we did not need to memorize the Ten Commandments. We could simply refer to the bookmark. Mrs. Meyers said, “You must write the words of the Lord on your heart.”
Mrs. Meyers began by explaining the commandments:
(1) No other God before God. That was an easy one. I had never heard about any other gods, before or after.
(2) No graven images. This one I thought referred to cemetery markers like my grandfather got when he died, with his name, date of birth and death and a carved lily. Mrs. Meyers said it meant something different, and that we as Baptists didn‘t have to worry about it. The idols it referred to were mostly found in Catholic churches.
(3) Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. This meant no cursing, regardless of what our parents or neighbors might say, since being adults they were subject to more stress than children, and God understood when they made the occasional slip.
(4) Keep the Sabbath holy. This meant going to church on Sunday morning instead of sleeping late or reading the funny papers.
(5) Honor your father and mother. This one was obvious. Parents controlled the supply of food and the car keys. Did Jesus really need to make this one a commandment?
(6) Don’t kill. No trouble following this one.
(7) Don’t commit adultery.
(8) Don’t steal. Apparently this included little things like hair barrettes or Barbie doll outfits if they belonged to your sister. You were expected to return them, even if you found them under the bed or behind the couch.
(9) Don’t lie. This mostly applied to not telling the truth to parents and teachers, including Sunday School teachers. Fibbing to younger siblings was allowed under a footnote, or so my older brother informed me.
(10) Don’t covet. This was an old-time word for being selfish. It meant don’t be selfish for toys your friends had that your parents could not afford. Also, don’t beg for every new toy you see on television on Saturday mornings.
I felt that I had a reasonable chance of following all these commandments. The one that concerned me most was number seven. Mrs. Meyers had completely skipped over that one. “What does adultery mean,“ I asked.
“You should ask your parents about this one, hon,” Mrs. Meyers said.
So I did.
“Mom, what is adultery? Dad, pass the potatoes, please.”
“This is not a topic for the dinner table,” my mother said. “Who taught you that word, anyway?”
“My Sunday School teacher.”
“They shouldn’t be talking about that in the Young Seraphim class,” Mother declared.
“It’s one of the commandments. We have to learn them all,” I said.
“That’s just fine,” said my father. “You can learn them without having to talk them to death.”
“I just want to know what it means,” I said.
“Don’t whine,” said my mother.
Later, I sat on our metal glider on the front porch. I was drawing on the backs of pages from an old 1958 calendar. My father sat at the other end of the glider, listening to a baseball game on a radio. The cord from the radio was plugged into a thick orange extension cord that ran around the back of the glider and into the house. I enjoyed sitting with my father. His legs were long enough to keep the glider constantly moving. While a new pitcher was warming up, I confided in my father, “I’m afraid I might commit adultery,” I whispered.
He extended his heels and brought the glider to an immediate stop. Then he coughed, but not in a choking way; he coughed in a trying not to laugh way.
“If I do, I’ll go to hell,” I continued. “It’s not fair I have to go to hell for doing something when I could have avoided it if I knew what it was.”
I knew plenty about hell by age eight. My older brother had painted a pretty graphic picture for me. All the houses and trees were on fire, there were little devils that jabbed forks into you day and night without warning, there was no water to drink, and snakes came up through the toilets to bite you on the butt. All in all, not a place I wanted to spend an eternity, however long that might be.
My father saw I was genuinely troubled. He pulled out the comics from the newspaper and handed them to me. “Draw Dagwood for me.“ He rose from his glider and rubbed the top of my head. “Don’t worry about that commandment,“ he said. “Only adults have to worry about that one. Kids get a pass on number seven. Want to split a popsicle with me?”
After he went into the house, I turned to a new page of the calendar and began drawing Dagwood. Pogo was easier to draw, having virtually no body, but I wanted to please my father. I felt that he had been straight with me, and what he said did give me some comfort. I just might escape hell should I be fortunate enough to come to a childhood demise. But he had done nothing to assuage my curiosity. What Dad did, probably without his knowing or intending it, was give me an important clue to deciphering the mystery of adultery.
I needed a quiet place to concentrate. We lived on a dead end street. At the end were a couple of empty lots, grown up in trees and brush. I was still slightly afraid to go there by myself. My brother had seen to that. But, I felt that I needed the quiet of nature to think through something of this magnitude. Besides, sitting alone in a tree seemed a safe place to ensure that I did not inadvertently commit adultery.
I started with the word: adultery. The word adult was right there. All I had to figure out was what activity adults engaged in that children did not. I went through my parents’ daily routines in my mind like a flip book. It seemed to me that we did a lot of things together: eating, watching television, attending church three times a week, brushing teeth, taking baths, feeding the dog, making beds, hanging up clothes. Fishing was my dad’s favorite pastime, and we often went along. The kids were not allowed to go into a boat with dad and his friends. We fished from the bank. Was adultery something that happened in boats, I wondered. My brother got to fish from the boat earlier that summer, so it couldn't be that. What did adults do that kids as old as my brother did not? I was completely stumped.
An early summer breeze blew through the leaves of the maple tree. I opened a library book I brought with me. My place was marked with a Bobby pin. I imagined how beautiful my library books would look with the gold tassel of the Ten Commandments bookmark flowing over the top of the spine. I felt the silky threads between my fingers. I might have lapsed into a daydream, but for the sudden sound that startled me nearly off my branch.
Sometimes people drove down our street, not realizing that it was a dead end. They would have to turn around between the two vacant lots, and go back out. Occasionally, someone would be frustrated or mad that they had made a mistake and screeched their brakes. As I sat in the lowest fork of a little sugar maple, I heard the squeal of brakes and the rubbing of tires on pavement. This was an example of what I later learned was called insight. At the time, I thought it was a revelation from God, my reward for all the thinking I had done to figure out adultery.
My answer had come, as clear as the song of a heavenly choir. I knew the one thing that adults did that children could not do. Adults drove cars. Still, driving was a useful activity. What could be sinful about it? Adultery was quite obviously the act of hitting someone with a car.
My child’s logic dictated that the driver did not even have to kill an operator or passenger in the other car, or a pedestrian. That would have been covered in commandment number six. Was hitting a parked car an act of adultery? No, I reasoned. There wasn’t a commandment that covered property damage, so that was obviously something God thought people could work out for themselves. I had figured it out on my own: adultery was hitting a person with one’s car, whether the victim was in a vehicle or walking, resulting in injury but not death.
Oh, the relief. Adultery, I understood, was well and truly an act I could not commit as a child. Until I reached my sixteenth birthday, breaking the seventh commandment was one thing I absolutely did not have to worry about. If I died before waking, as my nightly prayer suggested the possibility, and I managed to keep my hands off my sister’s things and told the truth, Heaven was mine.
I jumped down from the maple tree, and ran home. I longed to tell my parents that I had solved the mystery of the seventh commandment. My mother was visiting a neighbor, and my father was cleaning out the dog’s pen. I could be patient. I planned the perfect way to let Mom and Dad know that I understood the seventh commandment. That evening, I asked to say grace before the meal. “God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food. And, please don’t let Daddy commit adultery when we go to Grandma’s house this weekend. Amen.”
September 30, 2012
Another Reason I’ll Never Stop Writing
I have just returned from an exhausting and exhilarating weekend. Glorious days, both. I participated in the South Dakota Festival of the Book, in Sioux Falls. First, let me say that the days were drenched in warm, late summer sun. This year’s drought has brought the trees in South Dakota to early red and yellow splendor. The fields and fence line foliage bordering Interstate I-29 wore their wardrobe of muted autumnal hues. Best of all, being surrounded by hundreds of poets, story tellers and readers was like an extended recess. I’m ready now to return to my desk and settle down to write.
At the festival, I was reminded that we write to instruct and motivate. I met a teacher who wrote about a bird seeking the courage to leave her nest, showing young students how to find their own wings. We write to heal and inspire. I met a mother who wrote of her daughter’s struggle with a mysterious malady who expresses herself in beautiful abstract art. We write to share and entertain. I met a retired man who tells stories in books he might have shared at a campfire under prairie skies, had he been born in another time or place. We write to celebrate our freedom and honor those still longing for liberty. I met a man who faced death to lead his family out of the grip of cruel oppression.
So different in circumstance we were, but bound by our devotion to something that doesn’t even exist until we create it - a simple little word. We love the word so much, that we create another and another, and give them the most perfect form we can. Then with a faith that defies commercial logic, we come together and share our precious stories, hoping for compensation and recognition, but content more often with smiles and nods and thank-yous.
Though I am still processing the weekend, this much I can say with certitude: if ever I despair of what humans are capable of in the name of fear and ignorance and cruelty, I shall remind myself what we are capable of in the name of creativity and courage and love. Maybe instead of speeches at the U.N., the representatives should read the poems and stories of their people. Wouldn’t that be a session to remember? If the powers of the world ever decide to do such a sensible thing, I officially invite them to come to the Midwest, in the late summer. We’ll be easy to find; just follow the full harvest moon.
At the festival, I was reminded that we write to instruct and motivate. I met a teacher who wrote about a bird seeking the courage to leave her nest, showing young students how to find their own wings. We write to heal and inspire. I met a mother who wrote of her daughter’s struggle with a mysterious malady who expresses herself in beautiful abstract art. We write to share and entertain. I met a retired man who tells stories in books he might have shared at a campfire under prairie skies, had he been born in another time or place. We write to celebrate our freedom and honor those still longing for liberty. I met a man who faced death to lead his family out of the grip of cruel oppression.
So different in circumstance we were, but bound by our devotion to something that doesn’t even exist until we create it - a simple little word. We love the word so much, that we create another and another, and give them the most perfect form we can. Then with a faith that defies commercial logic, we come together and share our precious stories, hoping for compensation and recognition, but content more often with smiles and nods and thank-yous.
Though I am still processing the weekend, this much I can say with certitude: if ever I despair of what humans are capable of in the name of fear and ignorance and cruelty, I shall remind myself what we are capable of in the name of creativity and courage and love. Maybe instead of speeches at the U.N., the representatives should read the poems and stories of their people. Wouldn’t that be a session to remember? If the powers of the world ever decide to do such a sensible thing, I officially invite them to come to the Midwest, in the late summer. We’ll be easy to find; just follow the full harvest moon.
September 2, 2012
William Trevor, Story Sculptor
William Trevor is "the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language." The New Yorker.
In an interview William Trevor by Mira Stout for a 1989 issue of The Paris Review, William Trevor spoke of his work as a sculptor.
“I taught in a school in England for two years or so—in the Midlands near Rugby—before deciding to try and make a living as a sculptor. I came down to the west country and set myself up, rather like Jude the Obscure, as a church sculptor, and existed like that for seven years.”How natural for a master of short fiction to have worked in a medium where the smallest application of clay or stylus or chisel, would make an enormous change in the figure he was creating. A story writer chooses the details that tell the most about a character. He must tell the whole story with a few strokes.
Two Lives, is a brace of novellas, published together in 1991: Reading Turgenev and My House in Umbria. The book was short listed for the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, and Reading Turgenev was short listed for the Man Booker award.
Trevor’s characters are often people who find themselves trapped by their circumstances, buried alive in effect. In Reading Turgenev, we first meet Mary Louise in the place where her life has brought her, an asylum for the insane.
“A woman, not yet fifty-seven, slight and seeming frail, eats carefully at a table in a corner. Her slices of buttered bread have been halved for her, her fried egg mashed, her bacon cut. ‘Well, this is happiness!’ she murmurs aloud, but none of the other women in the dining-room replies because none of them is near enough to hear. She’s privileged, the others say, being permitted to occupy on her own the bare-topped table in the corner. She has her own salt and pepper.”
Mary Louise Dalton is a very ordinary, young, Irish Protestant woman. She leaves school with no greater ambition than to work in the local chemist‘s shop. When even that humble dream is denied her, she stays home, helping on the family farm. Still, she dreams of living in town, and puts herself in the path of Elmer Quarry, proprietor by primogeniture of a family drapery business, which he runs with the two spinster sisters. Elmer invites Mary Louise to the movies, and so begins a dull courtship and a inevitable marriage.
Mary Louise finds herself encased in an unconsummated marriage, an attic hideaway, and the revulsion of two sisters-in-law. Trevor’s wonderful Irish humor surfaces in a description of the two Quarry women: “Matilda and Rose were steadfast, not in their beliefs or in their faith, but in what they believed themselves to be: a little superior.”
On a walk through town, Mary Louise alters her route and makes a decision to visit a invalid cousin, Robert. This decision, made without premeditation, and very nearly not made at all, is a fist to the face of the character of Mary Louise we believe we have been watching Trevor sculpt. Mary Louise tells Robert of her unhappy life, and when he asks her why she married, the answer wounds him: “’I thought it would be all right. I thought no one else would marry me. I wanted to be in the town.’” In this short line, Trevor adds another detail to his sculpture: tiny but hugely telling.
For the rest of the story, Trevor describes Mary Louise’s attempts to liberate herself from her entombment. Trevor’s depiction of obsession and detachment from reality is genius. “For thirty-one years she’d clung to a refuge in which her love affair could spread itself, a safe house offering sanctuary. For thirty-one years she passed as mad and was at peace.”
The progatonista of My House in Umbria, Emily Delahunty, is a reverse sculptor. I’ve heard sculptors say they see the form within the stone, and chisel away what is covering it. Instead, Mrs. Delahunty has covered her past with layer upon layer of plaster to create a persona that defies revelation with simple chisel and mallet. The others in her household, one Quinty, a sort of butler, and Signora Bardini, a sort of housekeeper, know a part of the history of Mrs. Delahunty’s journey from orphaned daughter of circus performers to brothel proprietress to mistress of an Italian pensione - but not all.
To support herself, Mrs. Delahunty has written romances, with titles such as Flight to Enchantment and Behold my Heat! As the story opens, Mrs. Delahunty has lost her inspiration, but hardly her imagination. Between her past and her stories, there seem to be a great crowd occupying the house in Umbria: real, imagined, alive and dead.
During a trip by rail, the train is bombed. Mrs. Delahunty is wounded and several passengers in her car are killed. The wounded are taken to her home to recover, including young Aimée, traveling with her parents and brother, and the only one in her family to survive. There are also the English General, who has lost his son and daughter-in-law, and an exotic German, Otmar, who has lost his fiancée. The little group of strangers coalesces in the house, and tries to bring Aimée out of her shocked silence. Finally, an uncle is located in America, and after some delays, comes to claim his niece. The American, Thomas Riversmith, is an unimaginative soul, confused and annoyed by Mrs. Delahunty’s insistence on discussing her dreams, characters from her books and the details she has discovered of the lives of all those in her home. "'It is as though, Tom, we are all inside a story that is being composed as each day passes.'"
The more I think about this novella, the more I love it. In fact, I read most of it again for this article. Who can say which characters in our lives are more real - the living, the dead, or the imagined. I’ll keep trying to figure that out, but I expect never to be satisfied with any answer.
(In 2003, My House in Umbria was made into an HBO movie starring Maggie Smith.)
If you have read one, or both of the novellas in Two Lives, please comment with your thoughts.
Two Lives
August 18, 2012
First Editions For Fun and Profit
I prepare to slip my digits into a red leather mule, with the tooling, toe and heel of a Sunday-go-to-meeting cowboy boot. Not my style by light years, but it is brand new, and my size, and the price is most definitely right: $3.99. Shopping at Goodwill requires me to look squarely into the eye of my carefully cultivated self-image and say: "Do I want people to think I'm a s***-kicking, line dancing, daughter of the west?" Leather shoes under five dollars or self-image as blues-loving literati? I put the shoes back.
On to handbags. Once I bought a Gucci handbag at Goodwill for $7.99. I justified the premium price by the profit I expected to take when re-selling the bag on EBay. I hurried home, and went online. One of the first articles that came up in my Google search of Gucci handbags revealed how to spot a Chinese imitation. A knock-off can best be spotted by the quality and color of the lining, I learned. I unzipped my bag. The lining was straight from the Middle Kingdom. Was I too chagrined to return the bag? I was not. Seven ninety-nine, less my geezer discount, still buys four double cheeseburgers - or one salad.
Pictures have been good investment items at Goodwill. I read recently about a woman who bought a couple of modern paintings, intending to paint over them and use the canvas for her own work. The Angel of Lost Art caused her to serendipitously discover that the paintings were worth tens of thousands of dollars. Would such fortune be mine this Saturday? A ersatz family crest on black velvet? No. A series of grey parallel lines on a red background? No. A gaggle of geese in gingham aprons and sun bonnets crossing an unpaved road? Most definitely not.
Books are what I really come for. I am collecting titles to read when I retire. It's unlikely I'll be able to afford to do anything else, such as travel or go back to school. As I peruse the titles, I see an old favorite. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote. This is one of my very favorite books. (See "First of its kind: Truman Capote's In Cold Blood" my link text)
Of course, I buy the book, to read again. It will fill a Sunday with pure enjoyment for less than two dollars. But wait. Could it be true? Yes, it is. A first edition. The dust jacket is in excellent, if not pristine condition. There are no pencil marks or jelly stains in the pages. I drive home with my treasure, wrapped carefully within a fifty-nine cent Christmas hand towel I bought for this purpose. I smile the smile of the victorious. I have found and captured a great work of literature and a valuable collectable. Some day, when I'm down to my last few dollars and facing a dinner of cat food, I can pull the book off my shelf and sell it for a fancy restaurant meal or bag of groceries.
P.S. Electronic book fans, take note. While e-readers are easy to carry, can be read in any lighting, and hold the equivalent of the Congressional Library - you can’t read one throughout an entire weekend blizzard, without electricity to recharge, while wrapped in a sleeping bag in front of a fireplace, the words lit by fragrant candles. Nor, can you invest in a first edition that will extend your retirement savings by a few precious days. So there.
In Cold Blood
On to handbags. Once I bought a Gucci handbag at Goodwill for $7.99. I justified the premium price by the profit I expected to take when re-selling the bag on EBay. I hurried home, and went online. One of the first articles that came up in my Google search of Gucci handbags revealed how to spot a Chinese imitation. A knock-off can best be spotted by the quality and color of the lining, I learned. I unzipped my bag. The lining was straight from the Middle Kingdom. Was I too chagrined to return the bag? I was not. Seven ninety-nine, less my geezer discount, still buys four double cheeseburgers - or one salad.
Pictures have been good investment items at Goodwill. I read recently about a woman who bought a couple of modern paintings, intending to paint over them and use the canvas for her own work. The Angel of Lost Art caused her to serendipitously discover that the paintings were worth tens of thousands of dollars. Would such fortune be mine this Saturday? A ersatz family crest on black velvet? No. A series of grey parallel lines on a red background? No. A gaggle of geese in gingham aprons and sun bonnets crossing an unpaved road? Most definitely not.
Books are what I really come for. I am collecting titles to read when I retire. It's unlikely I'll be able to afford to do anything else, such as travel or go back to school. As I peruse the titles, I see an old favorite. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote. This is one of my very favorite books. (See "First of its kind: Truman Capote's In Cold Blood" my link text)
Of course, I buy the book, to read again. It will fill a Sunday with pure enjoyment for less than two dollars. But wait. Could it be true? Yes, it is. A first edition. The dust jacket is in excellent, if not pristine condition. There are no pencil marks or jelly stains in the pages. I drive home with my treasure, wrapped carefully within a fifty-nine cent Christmas hand towel I bought for this purpose. I smile the smile of the victorious. I have found and captured a great work of literature and a valuable collectable. Some day, when I'm down to my last few dollars and facing a dinner of cat food, I can pull the book off my shelf and sell it for a fancy restaurant meal or bag of groceries.
P.S. Electronic book fans, take note. While e-readers are easy to carry, can be read in any lighting, and hold the equivalent of the Congressional Library - you can’t read one throughout an entire weekend blizzard, without electricity to recharge, while wrapped in a sleeping bag in front of a fireplace, the words lit by fragrant candles. Nor, can you invest in a first edition that will extend your retirement savings by a few precious days. So there.
In Cold Blood
August 3, 2012
Acta est fabula. Farewell, Gore Vidal
This week, the world lost a unique voice: Gore Vidal. He professed no belief in an afterlife, and yet, his immortality is ensured in the words he left behind. Surely that is a version of heaven, for us if not for him.
I am old enough to have witnessed Vidal’s famous, live confrontation with William F. Buckley at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. It was a match up of egos Vince McMahon only dreams about. Their positions are shamefully timely - Vidal demanded the country extricate itself from a senseless war, and Buckley insisted the proper honor for a fallen soldier was the sacrifice of his brothers. The point-counterpoint ended abruptly when Vidal named Buckley a “crypto Nazi,” and Buckley threatened to punch Vidal in the face. Cut to David Brinkley, wide-eyed and stuttering. That’s great stuff. Modern reality television doesn’t come close.
In Vidal’s brilliant biographies, Lincoln and Burr, I discovered the humanity in these historical figures. These books were instrumental in developing my belief that a person is truly heroic who does good and serves his neighbors, while balancing the burden of his own flawed nature.
But my heartiest thanks goes to Gore Vidal for introducing me to Dawn Powell’s wonderful books. I read his introduction to Wicked Pavilion, and dove into the book. The Wicked Pavilion of the title is the Greenwich Village Café Julien, filled with eccentric literati and society swells. I imagined I was eavesdropping on Dorothy Parker’s Algonquin Round Table, or Truman Capote and his ladies who lunch. The book has the style and rapid fire dialog of The Thin Man or An Affair to Remember, with all that monochrome, minimalist décor and strong, smart women in hats and gloves. In a quote that could have floated from a Café Julien table on a blue cloud of cigarette smoke, Gore Vidal said, “For decades Dawn Powell was always just on the verge of ceasing to be a cult and becoming a major religion.”
Toward the end of his life, Vidal slipped into a kind of cruel curmudgeonry. Still, I think he earned the right to his venom and barbs. Let us not forget, Gore Vidal was, above all else, a writer. Here is a sampling of his wisdom on writing:
“In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it.”
“How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.” (Julian)
“You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have.”
“Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!” (The Essential Gore Vidal)
This quote is just for fun: “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.”
What is your favorite Gore Vidal book, play or quote?
Lincoln
Burr
The Wicked Pavilion
I am old enough to have witnessed Vidal’s famous, live confrontation with William F. Buckley at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. It was a match up of egos Vince McMahon only dreams about. Their positions are shamefully timely - Vidal demanded the country extricate itself from a senseless war, and Buckley insisted the proper honor for a fallen soldier was the sacrifice of his brothers. The point-counterpoint ended abruptly when Vidal named Buckley a “crypto Nazi,” and Buckley threatened to punch Vidal in the face. Cut to David Brinkley, wide-eyed and stuttering. That’s great stuff. Modern reality television doesn’t come close.
In Vidal’s brilliant biographies, Lincoln and Burr, I discovered the humanity in these historical figures. These books were instrumental in developing my belief that a person is truly heroic who does good and serves his neighbors, while balancing the burden of his own flawed nature.
But my heartiest thanks goes to Gore Vidal for introducing me to Dawn Powell’s wonderful books. I read his introduction to Wicked Pavilion, and dove into the book. The Wicked Pavilion of the title is the Greenwich Village Café Julien, filled with eccentric literati and society swells. I imagined I was eavesdropping on Dorothy Parker’s Algonquin Round Table, or Truman Capote and his ladies who lunch. The book has the style and rapid fire dialog of The Thin Man or An Affair to Remember, with all that monochrome, minimalist décor and strong, smart women in hats and gloves. In a quote that could have floated from a Café Julien table on a blue cloud of cigarette smoke, Gore Vidal said, “For decades Dawn Powell was always just on the verge of ceasing to be a cult and becoming a major religion.”
Toward the end of his life, Vidal slipped into a kind of cruel curmudgeonry. Still, I think he earned the right to his venom and barbs. Let us not forget, Gore Vidal was, above all else, a writer. Here is a sampling of his wisdom on writing:
“In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it.”
“How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.” (Julian)
“You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have.”
“Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!” (The Essential Gore Vidal)
This quote is just for fun: “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.”
What is your favorite Gore Vidal book, play or quote?
Lincoln
Burr
The Wicked Pavilion
