Beth Kaplan's Blog, page 47

Portrait of the Artist: my article on Alice Neel

The New Quarterly is posting my essay on Alice Neel openly for this week only, though without the portrait. Here it is, only this week.

https://tnq.ca/story/portrait-of-the-artist-my-visit-with-alice-neel/

And a short piece on how the essay came about that they've titled "Finding the Form with Beth Kaplan" will be up on the TNQ site on Thursday.

Major snowfall last night, the first this winter. School cancelled. Blessed Thomas shovelled and is now going across town to play in the snow with the boys. The world is muffled; there's not a sound, nothing moving except - how glad I am to see the flurries at the bird-feeder, luckily filled not long ago. Because it would be quite a slog to get out there now.

Grateful Thomas is here!
The trench. They expect between 15 and 25 cms. 

Last night the whole of 60 Minutes was devoted to The Betrayal, a new book by Canada's Rosemary Sullivan about the search for whoever betrayed the 8 inhabitants of the House Behind, Anne Frank and family and friends, all of whom died in the camps except Otto Frank. A retired American FBI agent took on the job with a huge team of experts. Their conclusion, though of course there's no forensic evidence: it was a prominent Jewish businessman who survived the war by giving the Nazis addresses in Amsterdam where Jews were hiding. 

There was concern anti-Semitism might rise as a result of this discovery, but the team hopes it shows how totally the Nazis dehumanized the Jewish people. 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/17/anne-frank-betrayed-jewish-notary-book

Anne has haunted me all my life, as she has everyone who's read her unforgettable Diary. I wonder about this man, how he lived the rest of his life, especially as the Diary became one of the most important books in the world and its author the most famous martyr of the war. How would it feel to know he had condemned her and many others to death?

I spent most of yesterday working on the essay ms., and the evening watching 60 Minutes and PBS while also reading by the fire, to the point that a blood vessel in my right eye exploded. Too much screen and too many words; today I'll read and edit the long essays sent by my Tuesday U of T class. Two treats yesterday: an hour and a half Skype with Lynn in Montpellier, best friend for nearly 55 years and one of the best-read people I know, and, speaking of best-read, Eleanor dropping the new David Sedaris diary compilation with the marvellous title Carnival of Snackery by the house as a gift. 

Deeply grateful there's food in the fridge and freezer, including Christmas dinner. I don't have to go anywhere. It will be a long quiet snow day. Now, back to reading. Forgive me, eyes.

on writing

The most fun! As I've reported here, I decided to explore the possibility of a compilation of my essays through the years. I find writing the first drafts of anything hard, a slog, but editing, cutting, shaping, moving this word here and that paragraph there, is joy. That's what I've been doing, and now I have a manuscript of 56,000 words.

Let me repeat that: in a week, I've compiled a manuscript of 56,000 words. 

That's not to say those are all GOOD words. So far it's 47 diverse personal essays, starting in 1994 when I began to publish in Facts and Arguments in the Globe - about half published or read by me on CBC, the rest dug up from my files. Some I think are good and others probably too weak to include but there for now, aiming for variety in tone and subject. All are the solipsistic reflections of an aging woman. Me me me: that's my subject and I'm sticking to it. Well, me, my children and friends and city and colleagues and loves and distresses and travels and thoughts and realizations. 

Fun.

Chaos in my office, open file cabinets and paper everywhere. But also I was just asked by Queen's Quarterly to send photographs; this spring they're publishing an essay about my British penpal Babs who died at sixteen in 1966. So there are also photos everywhere. 

Babs on the left, aged 12 in 1962 when we began writing, and her little sister Penny, who is now a good friend and new penpal living in Liverpool. 
Me also 12 in 1962
The letters 1962-1966

Teaching 3 classes this week, stimulating and exciting. It's been really cold; heaven to earn my living sitting in the kitchen in slippers. As always, too much to read. A new library book: Elizabeth McCracken's short stories The Souvenir Museum, wonderful. And of course Macca's two extremely heavy books. Be still my beating heart.

Maybe this will be my winter - compiling old stuff and filling in the gaps with new material, for a book of essays that - with my usual stellar track record - almost nobody will want to read. And what publisher wouldn't be keen to jump at essays by a middle-aged, middle-class white woman, the demographic everyone is most interested in right now? 

But I'm doing it anyway. Because it's easier than writing, for one thing. 

All true.

PS. I just skimmed the manuscript, and it's sure that many of those 56,000 words are repetitious or turgid or boring. Maybe it'll be a SLIM book of essays. 

StoryCorps, Matt Galloway, Macca's "The Lyrics"

First, may Djokovic go home and shut up. I never understood why I instinctively disliked him so much; he's just a tennis player, after all. But Federer and Nadal are clearly fine men, generous, open, honourable. Nothing about Novak is like that. And now we see him clearly. @#% him. 

Second, on the other hand, I'm writing a love letter to Matt Galloway, anchor of CBC's The Current. Does radio get better? The other day, I listened to an in-depth feature about Kazakhstan. Do I know anything about what's going on there, or care? I did not, but now I do. Matt Galloway is one of a kind, the best radio host I've ever listened to except for my beloved Eleanor Wachtel, the best of the best. 

The other day, I was flipping around on the TV when I stumbled on a documentary about Lady Bird Johnson. Like Kazakhstan, nothing could interest me less than this president's wife with her stiff dark helmet of hair, until I was caught by something and watched. It turns out she was a phenomenally strong, empathetic, wise woman who pushed through an enormous number of environmental bills; her husband, who would have been lost without her, was responsible for the most progressive legislation since FDR. Who knew? Thank you, TVO. Brava, Lady Bird. 

Sunday night, thanks to 60 Minutes, I also discovered StoryCorps. I'd heard of them, but was riveted by the piece about a project dedicated to listening to ordinary Americans and recording their stories. Be still my beating heart; listening to and validating stories is what I do, what I did on Tuesday as the U of T term started on Zoom and will do in two more classes tomorrow, what I've done since I started teaching memoir writing in 1994. Story! Tell all the truth but tell it slant. How much it matters. 

Anna is not sending her kids back to school on Monday. She doesn't think the government has done enough to protect kids and teachers, so she's taking time off work to be home with her two. Brutal decisions are being made in the most confusing environment possible. 

But for me, resident old fart, these are good days, interesting, driven. I'm not writing, I'm compiling - going through old files to find and edit essays written but not published for a possible compilation. I have over 45,000 words so far. It all may come to nothing, a document too flimsy, too solipsistic. But I'm giving it a go. And today, I was asked to send photographs for the article dear to my heart coming out this year in the Queen's Quarterly. 

On this mild day, I rode to Ben McNally's Books on King Street East. It's a wonder, this bookstore jammed with fascinating stuff, but I was there for one reason: Macca's huge bestseller The Lyrics, an expensive two volume collection, his ruminations on his songs, how they came to be, what they meant and mean. My Christmas present to myself. Joy. 

I also bought J.K. Rowling's The Christmas Pig for my young friends, grateful to live in a world with books, and bookstores, and writers. And radio interviewers and story collectors who care. Behind me, as I write, a pot of hyacinths is wafting the sweet smell of spring my way, reminding me that winter will end. This pandemic will end. 
Blessings. 

The Lost Daughter

Thanks to those who asked me to send them the essay and wrote back, including dear Greg, who wrote Your essay about your father and Alice Neel is magnificent. I was captivated by the first sentence and you didn’t let me go until the very end. I loved the second last sentence…a brilliant summary. Thank you for sharing that noble piece of writing. Take a deep bow. You deserve it.  

How to live up to that? If only publishers were so effusive! 

It was mild today, thank God, so I rode my bike to Loblaws to pick up a few luxury items not available at No Frills - Quaker steel-cut oats, Adams crunchy pb, Icelandic wild cod on sale etc. Had a great convo with the man behind me in line, who was buying two cartons of cherry-flavoured water. He thought it would help him lose weight. Yuck. "I'm from New York," he said, after our long chat. "People in Toronto aren't usually so friendly." When I told him I was born in New York, he shouted, "Aha! I knew it!"

Finally watched The Lost Daughter - both compelling and repellant. (Yes, spoiler alert, I think she's dying at the end.) How Olivia Coleman can make us care for a selfish, borderline sicko woman, I don't know, but she does. The film made me replay the many times in my own motherhood years when I wanted to leave and never come back - the time I ran screaming from the house into the snow to avoid strangling someone. But unlike Leda in the film, never in a million years would I actually have left. Inconceivable. 

It's clear in what I think is the most important line in the film, when Leda's desperate husband threatens to send their daughters back to live with her mother and she shouts he can't send them to the "dark shithole" where she grew up, that her relationship with her own mother was not good. Which helps explain, perhaps, her truncated soul. 

After, I thought, I think the thing I can be most proud of in my life - yes, books and teaching and friendships too - but the main thing is that my adult children like and trust and take care of each other, and I like and trust them and they me. I really like them. I do not understand some of their choices and disapprove of others - tattoos! taste in partners and media entertainment! alcohol and food! - but they are fine fine human beings and the love between us all is the best thing in the world. Leda ended up teaching at Harvard, so her gamble for her career worked for her. But, my guess is, not so much for her children. 

I have decided to take a lot of credit for my kids. They nearly drove me, their single mother, mad for 15 years. And yet we all came through. 

Speaking of which, I was over at Anna's yesterday for Sushi Saturday - we ordered sushi for us all which was expensive as Eli can eat most of it all by himself. Sam is the king of uncles, tossing the boys in the air to screams of joy, hauling them around upside down. The day may come when it will be harder for him to do that.

So many people have Covid. In the meantime, one friend is going through chemo and another is waiting for the results of a biopsy, but major surgeries are being cancelled because hospitals are overflowing with the unvaxxed. It's infuriating. Maybe we should be less tolerant. As we saw Joe Biden finally ramp up the rhetoric about Jan. 6 and the attempted coup - maybe the time has come to take the gloves off, both with American fascists and with the anti-vaxxers clogging our health care system. I know, we must take care of them, as we care for chain smokers and people who live on cherry-flavoured water. But sometimes, in fury, I want to run screaming into the snow. 

On the other hand, here's the view over the lake from Anna's front window last evening:

Essayer: to try

Friends, I guess uploading the TNQ essay didn't work after all. I can see it on my computer, but I gather others cannot. Back to the drawing board. 
For now, let's do this the simple way: if you'd like to read the article, please email me at beth@bethkaplan.ca, and I'll simply send you the PDF. Old school! 

The sun is out. I'm at my desk delving into old work, starting with a few essays I wrote in my twenties. Did almost no writing in my thirties - raising kids, moving across the country to Ottawa then Toronto, trying to be a good wife - except the MFA thesis that turned into my first book. 
From 1994 to 2004, I had nearly 60 essays published in the Globe and other newspapers and magazines and read by me on CBC. I thought essay-writing would be my life. But then the Globe stopped paying even the measly $100, $250 for Lives Lived, and I decided I would not write for nothing. Then a new producer at the CBC told me to be on my way, my writing was "not edgy enough." I quit essays to concentrate on books. With incredible success, as you know.
LOL. 
There's some good work in the pile, IMHO, and I'm thinking of a compilation. Another guaranteed bestseller. Especially if I can't find a way to post them anywhere! 
Sharing joy: a New Year's walk with Anna and Eli close to the lake. The boy is nine and will be taller than his mother soon.

Portrait of the Artist: my article in the New Quarterly

My personal genius Nishat has helped me post this. It's long, but I hope you enjoy it. Press the icon on the top right to open the whole PDF.

non, je ne regrette rien, sort of - well, maybe not, but I'm trying

Another gloomy day, not cold, just dark. But we're alive. Sam got over his flu or whatever it was and has just been offered the job he wants, to start Monday. I got out a library book that will be fun to read. It's almost wine time. Life is okay.

Something recently gave me some bad moments. You perhaps know about the painting of my father by the American artist Alice Neel, described in my article in the New Quarterly last month that I hope to post here when I can figure out how to change a PDF into some uploadable format. After my mother's death, my brother and I owned the painting jointly; since relations between us can be prickly, I thought it best to sell the work asap. It was complicated; I had it refurbished and two good copies made, then got permission for it to leave the country, took it to a New York dealer and then to Sotheby's. He and I were hoping to get a lot for it, I to help my kids with housing. But after two auctions at Sotheby's, it still had not sold. A private buyer offered $27,000 for it. 

Since I didn't want to sell it in the first place, I briefly thought of offering to pay half of that to my brother and taking it back home. It's my father's face! But  it just seemed too complicated. He and I took the deal and after expenses, cleared something like $12,000 each.

Last year, Alice Neel was given a huge retrospective at the Met in New York. She was compared to Van Gogh and named one of the greatest American painters of the 20th century. A friend recently sent me an article, which says, Neel’s reputation has undergone a — well, a “turnaround” doesn’t even begin to describe it. During her life, she was a marginal artist; and now — as evidenced by that massive retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum — she’s considered a master. Accordingly, the value of her works has skyrocketed. A single Alice Neel painting from 1966 — and not a particularly noteworthy painting — recently sold at auction for $2.5 million. 

Gulp.

Ah well. What the @#$# would I do with a million? U.S.? Besides help my kids, both housed in small crumbling apartments, buy a place to live? Say, a bright duplex, Anna and family on one side, Sam on the other, a huge yard ... Oh stop. All that money would be too complicated. I have everything I need, and although my kids do not, they're healthy and well and fine. 

So - after a few minutes of feeling sick, I put away my burning gut and crippling regret. Nothing to be done now.

But still...

No. Don't go there. 

On the other hand, Jean-Marc gave my memoir to a friend for Xmas. She wrote, "I just finished reading Beth Kaplan’s truly wonderful, magnificently written book. Thank you so much for your thoughtful gift. Please tell her that I relished every word!"

So that's better.

I also read two important, depressing articles: one from the Guardian, "Your attention didn't collapse, it was stolen," on how our brains, particularly young people's, are being hijacked by our devices, how we now can't concentrate for more than a few minutes - that this is a new kind of disaster and we have to fight back. Absolutely. I concur. 

And more pressing, this article, one of the most frightening things I've ever read, by Thomas Homer-Dixon, about the rise of fascism in the States: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-american-polity-is-cracked-and-might-collapse-canada-must-prepare/ 

If you're briefly feeling good about your day, read it and weep. What a world for our grandchildren - climate change and fascism. What happened? The day Obama was elected, we thought many of the world's problems had just been fixed. 

Horrifying. 

Time to have a glass of wine and read Alison Bechdel and turn off the brain for today. Thank you for listening. 

support for Jo Rowling, Don't Look Up, Joan Didion

It's movie week. Outside, snow; I guess it's winter here, after all. Netflix and the fireplace are my companions.

Annie, Ruth, and I had a fabulous New Year's Eve. They are two of the most interesting people on earth, with ideas, insight, travels, fascinating friends. The talk was gripping. Can't wait to do it again. 

We watched Don't Look Up. I enjoyed it a lot and don't understand why it has generated such negativity. Yes, it's broad and even silly sometimes and takes on obvious targets. But the topics are huge: politicians only interested in profit and polls are throwing citizens under the bus, the American media is appallingly shallow, and the world is heading into disaster by ignoring scientists. Adam McKay, director of another satirical film I loved, The Big Short, presents this dire scenario clearly and yet makes us laugh with a parade of great actors, particularly my favourite Mark Rylance as a sociopathic billionaire and an unrecognizable Cate Blanchett as a venal TV anchor. The film haunts me. Terrific.

Last night, I watched The Center Will Not Hold, a doc about Joan Didion. Fascinating. She's terrifyingly thin throughout but particularly skeletal at the end; David Hare who worked on her play speaks about how he wanted most of all to fatten her up. She's almost disturbingly detached about her life. A reporter always, groundbreaking, skilled, courageous.

And then the Hogwarts reunion, a twenty-year anniversary gathering of those involved with the Harry Potter films, came on. I intended to watch just a bit but ended up staying to the end - moving interviews with the young stars, who spent ten years of their young lives making the films, with the directors, with great British actors like Ralph Fiennes, Gary Oldman, the hilarious Helena Bonham Carter. Finding out the actors who played the diabolical Malfoys are nice people, that Hermione in actuality had a huge crush on Draco ... who knew?  

The doc could hardly have given shorter shrift to the magnificent, now controversial creator of all this magic: writer J. K. Rowling, who appears in a few brief clips. The Star recently printed a half page opinion article by a Torontonian telling us how very much all the books meant to her, but how now she despises the "cruel" "transphobic" JK. If she watches the reunion, she writes in the sweetest bit of virtue signalling, she'll mitigate the "damage" she has done by making a donation to a pro-trans organization. The headline affirmed: "transphobic" Rowling. It's simply accepted as fact.

As if a philanthropic writer who has donated huge amounts to charities particularly for women and children, who's known as extremely open-minded and generous with her time and money, who created a series about the struggles and eventual triumph of a group of outsiders that has meant the world to countless young people - and older people too - is full of vicious hateful blind prejudice. That cast members of the film have parroted this rhetoric must be especially devastating for her, not to mention her near exclusion from a celebration of her extraordinary achievement. 

Has the Twitter mob bothered to read what she actually said? Her thoughtful essay is below. It matters. 

The issue of gender and sexual orientation is incredibly complex; we're still learning and figuring out how to deal with different orientations and biologies. Rather than leaping to condemn, at least a writer who obviously - obviously! - is not a despicable bigot, we on both sides of this and any other issue need to be able to talk to each other without hatred, recrimination, and blame. 

https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

A joyful NYEve to you all

It's like an early spring day here - mild, no snow. Meanwhile my friends in BC are shivering in the deep freeze and buried in the white stuff. Get used to it, folks; our planet is in turmoil. I watched a doc about the climate crisis, showing what the decimation of the forests and the melting of permafrost means, and was in despair. We are marching toward catastrophe. What else can I do to help? Next morning, instead of turning up my thermostat, I wrapped myself in a shawl. I will try to avoid anything with unnecessary packaging. I know, these are minuscule, pathetic gestures against vast industries spewing poison into the air and water, governments that only care about the next election, billions of consumers desperate to buy more stuff. I guess we just have to do what we can. Get involved. Vote. 

On a cheerier note, I also watched another terrific episode of Bleak House from the BBC and a doc called The Super Bob Einstein Show, about the comedian, which was hilarious. 

Annie and Ruth are coming for dinner. I've often spent NYEve alone but am happy to spend it with dear friends. After our potluck meal we might watch Don't Look Up, which has had very mixed reviews but has a fabulous cast and an important topic. Or maybe we'll have too much to say to each other.

I did both Gina's line-dancing and Nicky's dance party this morning, so I'm better, as perhaps you can tell. Sam is still really sick, but he thinks it's stomach flu. Everyone fine at Anna's house, so far, though they're dropping like flies everywhere. But far fewer hospitalizations with Omicron, which is a huge relief.

The best thing, though, the brightest hope for the new year in my life is that three nights ago, I lay pondering at 4 a.m. as is my wont, when a scene popped into my head, the opening scene of the next book (or long article, not sure which.) I've tried many times, for years, to figure out a way into this story, and now, with that one vision, I think I have it - it's given me a start and a tone, a voice. We'll see; it's early days yet. But I'm happy to have finally embarked on this project. More details when it's a little more solid.

And another nice thing: I replied to the woman who wrote from Virginia to tell me she'd loved the audiobook and just got another letter back from her, mentioning a penpal she had in childhood. I too had a penpal, and it looks like now I have another. A kindred spirit, like the many blog friends I haven't met. 

Just heard about Betty White. I'm sad she didn't make it to a hundred, but what a life!

So much to say, but I need to do a little piano practice, tidy the house for my guests, and make a salad. I am grateful to be here and for much, much more. It has been a brutal year on our planet; how lucky I've been. 

I've ordered a new book from the library about two of my heroes: The Art of Alice and Martin Provensen. What a blessed couple they were, a long life making art together. I have a number of their books, especially their Fireside Book of Folk Songs, from my childhood; Mum used to play from it all the time. Why don't I get it out and have a try? It'll be painful - but what the hell.

May your 2022 be happy and healthy and creative. Sending love to you all, from my heart, here, to wherever yours is. 

The cardinal on my deck. Blessings.

I'm the one person in North America who doesn't have Covid

Just took another Covid test: for the third time, negative. So - a cold. I'm getting better, energy slowly returning. My son however is very sick with fever, chills, coughing. At Anna's household, she and the boys, luckily, are showing no symptoms. This thing is incredibly powerful. Soon we will all have had it and maybe, at last, herd immunity will kick in. 

In the Star yesterday, there was an article on the new film Don't Look Up, a satire about how humanity is ignoring the urgency of the climate crisis and our need to drastically change our behaviour. Beside the article was a photograph of the blocks-long lineup of shoppers outside the Eaton Centre early on Boxing Day. 

We are doomed. 

It's gloomy out and has been for days. Chilly but not cold, which is of course not normal, with a sparse sprinkling of snow, unlike western Canada, which is frozen solid. On a walk before Xmas I saw buds on a magnolia tree.  

I finished Patchett's Truth and Beauty, which I loved, and am now reading Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, the subject of Ann's book. Last night, watched a doc on Angela Merkel's extraordinary career and life. There is simply something solid, honest, and trustworthy in her face. What other politician can we say that about? Jacinda Ardern, and that's about it. They made the point that Merkel has maintained an amazing level of privacy in this very public world. She has never allowed the press into her home. Her husband is invisible, has never given an interview. Imagine that in America. 

The cardinal on my deck! So beautiful, so very very scarlet. And a bully bluejay at the feeder. Time to fill it again.

I need to go out, need to move this wheezing body and get some air, and yet I don't want to. I want to sit in my kitchen chair with a blanket on my knees forever. As Lynn once said, "You're going to die in that chair." But not yet, surely. Not yet.