Lily Iona MacKenzie's Blog, page 48

Meet Peri Hoskins, author of ‘East—A Novel’

 

It is 1994. Our junior lawyer narrator leaves behind a small, mean and viciously circular life representing petty criminals and takes to the road.

‘East-A Novel’

http://books2read.com/east

by 

Peri Hoskins

@PeriHoskins

East is poignant, gritty, funny, sad and above all: human. Hoskins’ laconic prose captures the harsh, arid country in all its big, empty beauty along with quirky exchanges with strangers, travel buddies, shop assistants, workmates, and friends old and new. A journey without and within, East taps into the spiritual realm that lies beneath this land and its people.

 

It’s 1994. Junior lawyer, Vince Osbourne, leaves behind a small,mean and viciously circular life in the city representing petty criminals and takes to the road. He’s lived 30 years. The wide continent of Australia is out in front. He’s almost young. Where will the road lead?

East takes in sunsets; rain in the desert; a five-year-old girl on a bike; a battered former thief and jockey; old-timers; young lovers; beautiful women, and aboriginals in public bars. The open road connects many vignettes making a rich tapestry of human encounters.

East is poignant, gritty, funny, sad and above all: human. Hoskins’ laconic prose captures the harsh, arid country in all its big, empty beauty along with quirky exchanges with strangers, travel buddies, shop assistants, workmates, and friends old and new. A journey without and within, East taps into the spiritual realm that lies beneath this land and its people.

Leaving

The bonnet in front of me is big and white. Rain on the windscreen – the wipers sweep it away. The clouds are grey, the road is grey, the suburbs are grey and I am leaving. There is joy in that. I’m leaving it behind – a life – small, petty, viciously circular. Out in front is the road and I don’t know where it will end. I am free. I’m almost young.

A beginning. Renewal pulses in my blood, pumping out from my heart, through my veins, feeding me, making me new again, a keenly conscious being reaching out to the uncertainty. This road will lead me to places that I have not seen – to people I have not met. There’s no place I have to be and no time I have to be there.

I drive on and on leaving the city far behind. The rain clears.

Sunlight glints on wet grass and trees. I see farmhouses, fences and cows. The gnawing in my belly eases as I’m gently enveloped by the freedom of the great mystery now upon me. The shackles of the old life fall away, for I’m shedding a skin – dry, worn, old and scaly. I found the courage to step into the dream. And the dream has become real.

The life of a suburban lawyer is behind me. Small decisions. Small repetitions. Which tie to wear today. Pay the electricity bill. Sunday – iron five shirts for the week ahead. See the same people. Say the same things. Hear the same things said. In that life I wondered whether I had it better than the petty criminals I represented in court. Some had no job and no home. They pleaded guilty and I said what I could say, for something had to be said. And then the court, that street-sweeper of humanity, tidied them away. For there must be a place – there must be somewhere for them to go: a prison, a halfway house, a drug rehab centre. There must be a place for everyone – somewhere. These people had fallen through cracks and become untidy. Did they envy my tidy life, those that I helped to tidy away? Did they see my life as I saw it – not a tidy life, but a tidy prison?

Tidiness. I had been taught to lead a tidy life. What was it they had said – the teachers, the headmasters? Work hard at school. Get a good job. Be a good employee. Pay your taxes. Mow your lawns. Be a good neighbour. Be a good citizen. Lead a tidy life. Not a full life, a varied life, a great life – no, a tidy life of small neat circles. I have lived thirty years.

As the trees and houses and petrol stations whistle by, the reasons for leaving once again crowd my mind. At thirty, life no longer stretches out before me like an uncharted great ocean. If I live to be eighty, more than one third of my life is spent. Where am I? At a time of life when I’m supposed to be somewhere – I’m nowhere I ever wanted to be. I’ll taste the last drops of youth before the cup passes from my lips, forever. The familiar yearning claws at my insides again – but it’s different now – it’s happy knowing I have been true to it – finally.

The yearning … a murmur in a corner of my soul … that’s how it started … a couple of years ago … I pushed it away. I was busy; there were things to do. It kept coming back, stronger and stronger: a growing gnawing that would not be denied. The day I turned thirty, I came to know what it was, finally. It was the feeling of having missed my destiny. At one of life’s important junctures, I don’t know when or where, I’d taken the wrong turn.

So maybe that’s what it is: a journey back down life’s highway to try and find the turn I missed. A journey to reconnect with who I am and what I should be doing here – in this life. Did I ever really want to be a lawyer? Maybe I did it because my father didn’t finish law school. Maybe I did it for him, and not for me. Didn’t have the courage to find my destiny and follow it … settled for safety and caution. And the small repetitions of the safe life had closed in and were suffocating me. Don’t know if that’s what it is … I had to go – I know that much … it was the most honest thing I could do. And now it’s real: this journey with no end and no decided route. It’s a big country. Yeah, I’ll head east … And in my travels maybe I’ll find something of the soul of this land and its people …

I have been at the wheel for four hours. The muscular movements needed to keep the car on course have become automatic. My thoughts drift freely now, first to the future – new, pregnant with possibility – before anchoring in my childhood. I recall a long-buried idea – from a time of wonder at a world full of possibilities. As a child I thought I could see into people, a kind of second sight.

Memories flow into my mind – sharp, clear, focused. I see things now as I saw things then. I am a small boy sitting in the passenger seat of a car. My father is driving. We approach an intersection. A policeman is standing in the middle directing traffic. He signals the car in front to stop. The policeman fascinates me – his neat blue uniform, high black boots, long white gloves – his precise hand signals. He makes cars stop and go by moving his hands like the man who made the puppets move at the fairground. The gloved hands move and the cars obey, crossing the intersection, slowly and respectfully passing the uniformed man.

From above I hear the noise of a plane. In the eye of my mind as a child I see the silver wings and fuselage. The policeman’s eyes turn skyward to the plane I see clearly in the window of my imagination. The officer’s long-gloved hands slowly fall to rest at his heavy belt. Cars bank up at the intersection. The driver in front looks at him for directions but he gives none. Unconscious of the traffic, his attention is focused in the sky above. The face of the policeman loses form and I see into him. First I feel his discomfort in the hot uniform, the dryness in his throat and the tiredness behind his eyes. Gradually my perception deepens. I sense the numbed heart, the thwarted ambitions – the hopes and dreams unrealized and gone awry. He doesn’t want to be here, directing traffic. The past has cheated him. He is disconnected from the present and fearful of the future.

A car horn honks from behind. A driver doesn’t know why the traffic is not moving. The policeman’s eyes return to the traffic, his arms snapping up with military precision. As he waves us on, the look of purpose clothes his face once again and the moment of seeing into him has passed.

The second sight would come to me without warning and always just for a fleeting moment or two. I would see my mother trying to hide an emotion or catch my father unguarded, looking into the distance. In the moment of second sight the physical would melt – the body become transparent and amorphous. Instead of seeing the person I would see into the person – reach inside to the heart, sense the fears, touch the dreams – see the humanity, raw and struggling.

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5 Stars Across The Board

A winner!

To be honest; ‘East’ is not the kind of book that I typically read. I am more used to Zombies taking over the world and all kinds of science fiction. I read ‘East’ in an attempt to diversify. I am glad that I did. There were no Zombies, no alien attacks, but instead; I was presented with the story of a lawyer in Australia who walked out on his old life and started a new one. He has adventures; some good, some bad as he travels across the country. Hoskins writes with a brutal honesty that brings the character to life. After reading this book, I felt like I had an “insider’s view” into what life was like for some folks in Australia in the mid-90’s. That is the whole purpose of reading; isn’t it? To get into other character’s lives and to experience things you would otherwise have no clue about. Hoskins does a masterful job of drawing you in to his world with vivid descriptions and a detailed insight of the character’s observations as he travels from big cities to remote locations. It wasn’t an easy journey; but it certainly was entertaining! 

~By Ken Gusler

East – a journey you won’t regret going on.

Once again, as with Hoskins’ other book, Millennium, I was not disappointed. The novel, East, has something of a Kerouac and Cormac McCarthy feel to it; a tone that suits the on the road style journey that the main character, Vince, takes. East is refreshingly honest in its commentary about society’s foibles, life, the people Vince meets (themselves on their own journeys) and Vince’s own reasons for self-exploration. In some ways, the characters Vince meets along the way are a perfect foil for Vince’s reflection; themselves giving the reader greater insight, not just into humanity, but also into Vince himself (and, dare I say it – ourselves). Through his travels, we learn more about Vince’s life and the need to connect with his father, seek approval; and in doing so, find some form of self-acceptance within a society that is quick to identify and perhaps vilify, the “other”. Hoskins’ ability to capture the humanity in the characters he writes of, some of them less than sympathetic in personality, prevents the personalities that populate East, from existing as caricatures secondary to the main character, Vince’s, own journey. East will make you think, smile, laugh, gasp, shake your head and reflect upon your own attitude to yourself and your place in the world around you. Oh, and the moment with his father – perfect. I thoroughly recommend this novel. 

~By Kate ‘griz’ Pill

Excellent writing and an awesome book.

I loved this book it made me want to pack up my truck and take an adventure like the author Peri’s character Vince did.

I really enjoyed this book set in Australia in the style of Jack Kerouac On the Road. The author Peri paints a picture of a dissatisfied lawyer, named Vince who decides to pack up his car and head east for new adventures. He comes across many interesting characters each impacting his life in their own ways. He’s 30 years old and searching for his life’s purpose after leaving his promising career in law. He sets off on his soul searching journey to find himself and gets entwined in the lives of the supporting characters. Staying with friends, youth hostels, and camping he finds his nomadic journey to become a spiritual quest and opens himself to whatever is meant to be. I felt invested in Vince as the main character and I wanted him to find his life’s purpose and happiness. I highly recommend this wonderful book especially if you’re a traveller or are ready for a new adventure.

A Few Thoughts on Flash Fiction and Nonfiction

Len Leatherwood has made available some important insights in this post for writers and readers.

Twenty Minutes a Day: A Step Towards a Balanced Life

I teach a flash fiction and nonfiction class for Story Circle Network. Right now I am teaching flash nonfiction.  Flash is usually a piece that is limited to around 1200 words maximum.

Here are some thoughts on this type of writing.

Flash fiction and flash nonfiction differ clearly in content, but many of the needs are the same given the conciseness of the form.

In an excerpt from The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Flash Fiction, Nathan Leslie in his article, “The “V” Word,” states, “By focusing on language, scene, voice, and character, my students often find themselves writing compelling and effectively ambiguous stories rather than cloyingly serendipitous and artificial ones. By doing so they learn that in flash fiction:

• Accomplishing one clear goal is of utmost importance.

• Hemingway’s Iceberg Principle, and minimalist writing overall, can work wonders—understatement and purposeful ambiguity are vital.

• Every word bears…

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RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB’S BACK-TO-SCHOOL BOOK & BLOG BLOCK PARTY

Dear Visitors,

WELCOME to the Rave Reviews Book Club’s BACK-TO-SCHOOL BOOK & BLOG BLOCK PARTY at Lily Iona MacKenzie’s blog for writers and readers. You can find me wandering the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area. 

I’m offering one lovely book bag whose value is $15 and an autographed copy of my poetry collection All This.

Thanks to Jane Davis who published the following interview on her site: http://jane-davis.co.uk/2016/07/06/virtual-book-club-2/.

Q: Please tell us how you came to be a writer.

I don’t think I had any choice.  Writing is as necessary to me as eating, and if I don’t write each day, I become irritable and unpleasant to live with. Ask my husband!

When I was thirteen, I started keeping a diary that I wrote in a coded language I invented so anyone who read it wouldn’t be able to enter my world. I have no idea what happened to that first attempt to keep a journal, but I’m sure it was my writing self trying to emerge. That part of me was buried though, along with the diary, until my mid-twenties when I experienced a deep depression. At that time, I started keeping a journal again. I also went into therapy, the first step in recovering my writing self.

The journal writing was my attempt to understand what was happening. I wrote daily not only about what I was thinking and feeling, but I also recorded my nightly dreams. I’ve continued this practice ever since, learning much about myself in the process. I feel that keeping in close contact with my dreams has fed my writing and enriched my imagination. At this time, I also started exploring the craft of writing, entering an undergraduate creative writing program.

Q: One of the main protagonists in your novel Fling!, released in 2015, is Bubbles. What words best describe her?

At 90, Bubbles is still feisty, curious, adventurous, lustful, fun loving, risk taking, and determined to live life on her terms.

Q: Where is the book set and how did you decide on its setting?

Fling! starts in Canada where the two main characters, 57 year-old Feather and her 90 year-old mother Bubbles, start their journey to Mexico. On the way , they stop in the San Francisco Bay Area, and segments of the book also take place in Scotland and return to Canada at times. But the book’s heart is in Mexico.

  These settings were determined by the characters and where they were born. Bubbles is from Portree, Isle of Skye, but moved to Canada when she was 15. Feather was born in Canada, but moved to California when she was 23.  The two women end up in Mexico because Bubbles’ mother Heather had died in Mexico City in the early 1920s. The Mexico City dead letter office has sent Bubbles a letter asking her to claim her mother’s ashes that were left there 70 years earlier. The dead letter office can’t send the ashes in the mail “for health reasons.” That letter sets off Feather and Bubbles on their quest.

Q: At what point in writing the book did you come up with its title?

The original title of the book, which it had from the beginning, was A Highland Fling. However, after revising the manuscript, I realized that A Highland Fling was too limiting, suggesting that all of the action takes place in Scotland. In reality, these women are more motivated by various definitions of fling: a brief period of indulging one’s impulses; a usually brief attempt or effort; or a brief sexual or romantic relationship.  A Scottish dance has only a brief mention in the book. Hence Fling!

Q: Was your novel inspired by any real life events? And, if so, how do you deal with the responsibility that comes with this?

Fling! began because I was curious about my mother’s mother, someone I had never met. Early in the 20th C, my grandfather, a former Scottish schoolmaster in Scotland’s highlands, immigrated to Calgary, Canada, hoping to find a better life there for himself and his family. Meanwhile, WWI broke out, and his wife and five kids couldn’t join him for seven years. When they did, my grandmother couldn’t adjust to the brutal winters or to her husband. After being there a year, she moved out, refusing to put up with my grandpa’s verbal and physical abuse, and became a housekeeper for a wealthy family. The story is that her boss became her lover and took her to Mexico with him. She never returned and died there. I wanted to try and recreate what life might have been like for her once she left Canada, and that then brought in a number of other characters that inhabit the novel.

  While some aspects of Fling! have seeds in my history of growing up in Canada and in family, those origins shift from autobiographical into art when I start writing. None of the characters are specifically modelled on people I know, but they may all be, at least partially, based on characteristics of people I have known in Canada and elsewhere. Or they may be totally invented.

Q: Do you think that self-revelation is part of the writing process?

I don’t think we can be serious writers without undressing completely, externally and internally, in our works. How else can we explore the vastness of life and its many dimensions? While we may be inventing characters and situations, fragments of our selves can’t help but be embedded in our work.  Some writers are more autobiographical than others and therefore more revealing in that sense. But even in my novel Bone Songs (to be released in November 2016), which is not at all autobiographical, I reveal myself in the ideas I explore there. I am not at all like the amoral main character, Curva Peligrosa, but I do share some of her attitudes and beliefs. So the autobiographical gets intertwined with the fiction, and a writer can’t avoid being revealed in the process.

Q: Where does this story fit in with the rest of your work?

Fling! was the second novel I wrote. Freefall: A Divine Comedy came next (my third book). Bone Songs followed. A follow up to Freefall will be Tillie: Portrait of a Canadian Girl in Training. It features a young version of the main character in Freefall.  I’m also written a collection linked stories in The Sinner’s Club and I have another short story collection that’s ready for publication, though these stories aren’t linked. In addition, I publish poetry (one of my poetry collections All This was published in 2011, and I have another one ready to go: God Particles. I’ve also published numerous travel pieces, memoir, personal essays, book reviews, interviews, and etc.

Q: What is it about your novel that you feel makes it particularly suitable for book clubs?

Since women compose most book clubs, Fling! has a particular appeal to them, although I’ve talked to men that have read the book and loved it. Still, the main characters are female, four generations in fact. And in addition to the narrative being a bit of a comic romp featuring Feather and Bubbles, it also takes a serious look at the damaging results of multiple abandonments between generations and how the characters in this book reach some kind of resolution. So there is a strong psychological dimension.

As one reader who posted her review on Amazon said, “This book gave me a reason, or rather an opportunity, to celebrate my relationship with my mum. It will be a keepsake for the rest of my life. In fact, when my daughters grow up, this will be a book I will gift them. It is a must must must read for all mothers and daughters as well all men who love their mothers and daughters.”

But art plays a major role in Fling! Feather is a visual artist that focuses on sculpture, as is her great grand-dad Malcolm, another important character in the book. And Bubbles is an artist in her own way in that she’s open to the unknown and will to give it shape in her life. This thread weaves its way through the narrative.

There also are questions I can provide to book clubs if they’re interested in having their thinking about the novel enlarged.

Q: Do you find yourself returning to any recurring themes within your writing and, if so, are you any closer to finding an answer? Or, more simply put, What is the question that keeps you writing?

There isn’t only one question that sparks my writing. I have always been a curious person, so I’m interested in many things, but especially the BIG  questions: Why are we here? What does it mean to be human? What role does the unconscious have in our lives? How can women become more equal/powerful in a world that still favours males over females? I think my work so far explores some of these question and more!

Q: Khaled Hosseini says that he feels he is discovering a story rather than creating it. Are you an avid plotter or do you start with a single idea and let the novel develop organically?

Yes, I’m in Hosseini’s camp. When I start writing, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, I have no idea where I’m going. That’s the fun part of writing for me: the quest. The heading off into the dark with very little light guiding me. I’m not sure I even have an “idea” at the beginning of a work. For example, my novel Bone Songs started with an image. I had read in the paper about a tornado hitting a small town near the city where I grew up in Canada. For some reason, that image grabbed my attention, and the novel actually starts at that point, with the tornado approaching the fictional town of Weed, Alberta.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

Since I have just signed a three-book contract with Pen-L Publishing, the press that released Fling! and will be publishing Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and Bone Songs will be released in the spring of 2017, I have a lot of revision to do, the fine-tuning that’s necessary before a book goes public.

Q: What’s your favourite / least favourite aspect of your writing life?

It’s lovely to be published, but the demands of marketing can be overwhelming at times. I have about a dozen Facebook groups that I need to keep up with in addition to Twitter. Pinterest. Instagram, etc. Finding lovely bloggers like yourself that are interested in doing reviews or book reviews is time consuming. Then there is scheduling and doing readings. Keeping up my blog and blog posts. It leaves me very little time to write!

Q: Is there a phrase or quote about writing that you particularly like?

I love John Cheevers quote: “I write to make sense of my life.” I feel that’s what I’m doing when I write.

Q: Where can we find out more about you and your work? (Please include all of your social media links that you would like mentioned.)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25818399-fling

http://www.amazon.com/Lily-Iona-MacKenzie/e/B004R8ZDNU

https://www.facebook.com/lilyionamackenzieauthor/

@lilyionamac

For those of you who are interested in poetry and will be receiving a free autographed copy of All This, here is more info about it:

“There’s a restlessness to Lily Mackenzie’s poetry that might properly be called “curiosity” — the eye alert in its socket, the ear straining to register. “The vaults// of syllables” pour out their riches: a delectation of sky, a rampage of color, the sweet sting of mortality. From Mendocino to the Sea of Marmara to the Mexican highlands, these poems are afoot in the Whitman sense, and wonderfully “chewy” — deeply figured and sonically dense. Or let’s say they sink their teeth into experience, lap it right up, “night splitting/ open and spilling// its milk.” In other words, what we have here is poetic sustenance.” Aaron Schurin, Academic Director for the University of San Francisco’s MFA program.

“The poems in Lily Iona McKenzie’s All This are an engrossing atlas of both geographical and emotional landscapes. They move from Canada to California, from the body to bereavement, from poetry to politics, from loss to love and back again. These innovative poems resonate because, miraculously, their topographies feel both familiar and new. We love living in them.” Dean Rader, former Associate Dean of Arts & Sciences and current professor of English at the University of San Francisco.  He has published widely in the fields of poetry, American Indian studies, and popular culture.

Thanks for stopping by my blog and don’t forget to share your thoughts and comments below.  Good luck on winning my giveaways!  I’ll see you at the next stop of this awesome BOOK & BLOG BLOCK PARTY!

 

 

 

 

Filed under: Links

The Tyranny of Show vs Tell

If you’ve ever taken a writing workshop, you’ve heard many times the bromide “show, don’t tell,” but often the showing part dominates the telling and becomes tyrannical. As a writer friend once pointed out, when we’re writing fiction, we are storytelling and not storyshowing, and there are many ways to tell an engaging story.

Of course, some beginning writers do tend to summarize more than dramatize. They haven’t learned yet how to traverse between generalities and specifics. And in our early drafts, even more experienced writers often are just trying to capture their characters before they can disappear. Showing, then, tends to happen later in the drafting process.

However, it is important to know when one or the other is required, and that’s the advantage of using this shorthand workshop comment. When we show, we try to embellish scenes and important moments through using descriptive details that create images. Dialogue also helps to nail down character traits and interaction. When we tell, we are usually summarizing background information or periods that don’t need to be in the spotlight. We don’t want to call too much attention to some aspects of the tale we’re conveying.

I’m all for using whatever tools are at our disposal, and I don’t reject the idea that knowing how to show and tell effectively are important elements in writing n

arrative. However, they aren’t the only “show” in town. There are other ways to create drama and develop character that often get overlooked by the overused workshop mantra.

I’ve been rereading Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and I’m absorbed by her characters’ inner lives. Not only does Woolf violate many of the strictures we hear in writing workshops about the dangers of switching points of vie

w within a chapter, but she also rarely resorts to showing or dramatizing a scene. Instead, she seems to inhabit her settings and characters’ interiors, taking the reader with her inside their inner worlds, portraying how complex they are. I feel as if I’m watching a movie of their internal processes.

Of course, Woolf isn’t the only writer who takes a different approach to creating compelling narratives by not depending on show versus tell. W. G. Sebald’s hybrid “novels” have their own narrative logic that also disrupt the usual notion of what constitutes a story. And there are many others in this category: Samuel Beckett, David Foster Wallace, Proust, and other likeminded authors who aren’t afraid of a character’s introspection. In fact, I’m often bored by passages in some naturalistic works that race along, fueled by external action, forgetting to linger and let their creations sink down into the unconscious from which we have emerged.

What’s your take on this topic?

 

Filed under: Links Tagged: fiction, narratives, novels, show versus tell, showing, stories, storytelling, telling

HOW BROAD IS THE NEW BROAD MUSEUM?

Museums have become the place where my husband and I go to be replenished spiritually. So whenever we can visit a new one, or revisit one that’s familiar, we jump at the chance. One year, after reading biographies of Matisse and developing a passion for his work, we pursued him when we visited several places on the East Coast, including the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia and the Baltimore Museum of Art’s extensive Matisse holdings. We weren’t disappointed. Nor have we been let down by the many other museums we’ve seen around the world.

I wish I could say the same for the Broad Museum of Contemporary Art that opened on September 20, 2015 in Los Angeles. Billionaire philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad funded this new structure, and entry to the collection is free. Fees are only charged for special exhibits, such as the Cindy Sherman show that was there during our visit. However, visitors must obtain advance reservations if they don’t want to wait in long lines for admission.

We had booked for a recent Saturday at 5:30 PM and found parking easily in the garage beneath the structure. Unfortunately, the elevator deposited us outside the building, and a security guard told us we had to wait over a half hour in order to line up with our 5:30 group, and, no, there is no entry to the museum before then. Nor were there any seats outside, so we had to stand the whole time, making the wait annoying. My concern is what happens to the elderly and infirm, especially during colder weather. Even though it had been warm that afternoon, there now was a wind, and it wasn’t pleasant waiting outside in my sleeveless dress. If we wanted shelter and a place to sit down, we had to visit a neighborhood cafe.

By the time our line was allowed to enter, I had already developed a negative impression of this place. My time inside didn’t improve it much. Yes, the exterior honeycomb design is interesting and contributes to the filtered light the galleries receive. But compared to the exuberant architecture of the Walt Disney Concert Hall located across the street, the Broad is a poor cousin.

It does have a glass elevator, as well as an escalator, that takes viewers to the main galleries on the 3rd floor. They currently feature around 250 of the 2000 holdings (the second floor contains the remaining collection, but it’s not open for viewing). The first floor has a gallery that’s used for visiting exhibitions (that’s where Cindy Sherman was located) and the museum store. But no cafes reside inside the structure, and the first floor interior resembles a cave.

While there were numerous paintings on display we hadn’t seen before, many works had been shown at the Broad extension at LACMA years before. We enjoyed some of the pieces we hadn’t seen earlier, but the Broad is not a user-friendly space. There are very few benches in the huge galleries where visitors can both rest or just enjoy the paintings. This absence sends a cynical message that this particular museum is not designed for the art lover’s enjoyment. (We were made even more aware of this oversight when we stopped at the Getty museum a few days later. Plush, cushioned seats abound in its galleries, inviting viewers to relax and enjoy the art.) It feels more like another LA freeway: keep moving. Even the male and female bathrooms on the ground floor are a joke given the number of visitors this museum attracts. Each one contains three stalls. One sink. I had to stand in line to wash my hands after using a toilet.

It was generous of the Broads to create this space and not to charge admission. But overall, we found it a major disappointment. While the galleries are broad (spacious), the vision of what a modern museum should do—besides showing off its art—is narrow.

 

Filed under: Links Tagged: Broad Museum; lacma; art; contemporary art;

What does it mean to be human?

As a humanities major, I had read most of the ancient Greek writers’ major works: Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, Sappho, Solon, Plato, Aristotle, Hesiod, Pindar, and many others. But Richard Jenkyns’ has not only reintroduced these major figures to me, but he has also revealed how complex their work was.

It’s still amazing to read how profound they were at such an early point in western history. They were laying a foundation for what followed, functioning as guides into the complexities of philosophy, history, drama, poetry, and even the novel. Contemporary writers who haven’t read their work are incomplete without it.

Jenkyns, Emeritus Professor of the Classical Tradition and the Public Orator at the University of Oxford, has a fine ear for what sings in these early writers, his own prose clear and lilting. In this example, Jenkyns is reflecting on the Odyssey:

In the Odyssey poets are honoured but subordinate people who perform in the halls of chieftains, a picture which surely reflects a historical reality. It was a remarkable idea to give the greatest warrior imagination and sensitivity. The poetry of his mind comes out in two strange similes that he uses. In his most furious speech he likens himself to a bird collecting morsels for her young and going hungry herself—an odd image, and for all his passion almost a humorous one. Later, talking to Patroclus, he compares him to a little girl running alongside her mother and tugging her dress until the mother picks her up; that simile is teasing and affectionate, but also self-aware, for Achilles recognizes that he is going to give in to his friend’s request. And both times this supreme example of masculinity has the quirkiness to compare himself to a female. No one else in the poem talks like this. (page 9)

And no other classicist that I’m aware of has made this observation, setting up Achilles as a very different tragic hero, one who isn’t afraid of having feminine qualities as well as his obvious masculine ones. Jenkyns’ ability to see these works freshly opens them up in new ways, offering thoughtful, nuanced interpretations.

We moderns think we have progressed, leaving behind our forefathers/mothers. But just as with our biological parents, our belief that we have surpassed them (and sometimes we have) prevents us from really appreciating their gifts. So, too, with our culture’s classical period. As a novelist, I was amazed to discover that while the 18th Century witnessed the rise of the novel as we know it, there were earlier writers already exploring that form. The Golden Ass by Apuleius is the only ancient Roman novel (AD 125) to survive in its entirety, a precursor to the episodic picaresque genre. It contains several different narrators and stories, including Cupid and Psyche’s tale. Jenkyns translates what he believes to be “the most sheerly beautiful sentences ever written in Latin prose:

She sees the festive tresses of his golden head drunken with ambrosia, the clusters of ringlets that roam over his milky neck and rosy cheeks beauteously trammeled, some hanging a little before, some hanging a little behind, at whose excess of brilliance, flashing like lightening, the very light of the lamp wavered. Along the shoulders of the flying god dewy feathers glisten, their flowers sparkling, and although his wings are settling to rest, the ends of the featherlets, tender and delicate, wanton restlessly in tremulous dance. (p. 240)

It is gorgeous writing, and magical realism exists even then, each sentence swollen with those qualities that lift the reader from the mundane to the sublime. The ringlets come across as in motion, and this god has flowering feathers that end in the featherlets “tremulous dance.” The passage is a tour de force.

My comments here offer only a slice of what this study covers. I hope you gentle readers and writers will make time to read this inspiring work. It seems important in this tumultuous era to be grounded in material that still sings to us of what it means to be human. And it’s uplifting to be reminded that the ancients set us off on such a prolific path.

Filed under: Links Tagged: classical literarure;, Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, Sappho, Solon, Plato, Aristotle, Hesiod, Pindar, humanities;, Odyssey, Richard Jenkyns;, the rise of the novel ;

Writing And Sex?

There’s no connection between writing and sex, right? Between selling one’s skills as a writer and being a prostitute? This question has vexed me recently.

I open the door to my husband’s psychoanalytic office, a neutral ground where I can meet with my own clients, writers (or potential writers) that need help. I’m about to enter into the complexities of narrative with a young man who will graduate from college soon as a computer major. Yes, the poor guy has been bitten—not by the Zika mosquito carrier but by the writing bug.

He had emailed me for help after taking his first writing workshop with a fellow writer whom I know from an on-line critique group. She had recommended me as a writing coach. In his message, he had said, “I want to work with you once a week during the summer so I can publish a short story by the time we’re finished.”

Gulp. I recall how long it took me to reach a publishable level in my fiction efforts. It definitely was more than a couple of months, but I don’t have the heart to tell him that. Or am I too eager to earn my hourly rate to break out the bad news immediately?

I shake my new pupil’s hand and invite him to sit next to me at my husband’s desk. The overhead lights and a couple of lamps don’t illuminate the whole room, casting shadows and a romantic glow. I can see where this atmosphere would be conducive to the state of reverie that happens during an analytic session, but it isn’t the kind of impression I want to convey. The analytic couch, Persian carpet, and leather easy chairs make the space feel a little like a boudoir, and I’m relieved I haven’t worn a strong fragrance or anything else that might suggest I’m offering anything more than writing help.

At the end of our session, he hands me my fee in cash. I’m selling him the skills I’ve gained over many years both teaching writing in a classroom as well as writing myself in nearly all of the genres. But it’s different receiving a paycheck once a month to a client paying me in cash. I let him drop the money on the desktop, embarrassed to take it from him directly.

Later, I realize why. Even though there was no suggestion of sexual involvement, this process of drawing out a novice writer and helping him to bare himself on the page resembles a little what happens between some prostitutes and their customers. It’s an unequal dynamic, the prostitute really having the upper hand, drawing out and taking in her john much as I’ve taken in aspects of this young guy. There’s been a transaction, and he leaves, having expelled onto the page the seed that he hopes will blossom into a publishable story.

 

Filed under: Links Tagged: writing; sex; tutor; writing coach; psychoanalysis; boudoir; prostitute; writer;

Where Do Characters Come From?

Where do characters come from? I’ve been asking myself that question for as long as I’ve been writing, but the complete answer still evades me. The process is as mysterious as the origins of life itself, maybe even more so. At least we know that life on earth evolved from some primordial soup. But what concoction serves as the foundation for those who inhabit our stories?

Seeds come to mind. Seeds give birth to plants and other living things. Humans start as a kind of seed. And so do our creations. As writers, we have experienced multiple settings and experiences. We’ve connected with many different types of people. All of those contacts can provide us with material that we sift through, plant in our fictions, and watch grow.

For me, often what helps me find my characters is their name, an essential way for me to discover who these individuals are. In my novels Fling! and Bone Songs, I couldn’t have uncovered the protagonists if I hadn’t first found the words to set them free. In Fling! 90-year-old Bubbles and her daughter 57-year old Feather come alive because these designations depict so accurately these women’s personalities. Bubbles actually lives in a kind of bubble, but she also has a feisty nature and an enduring curiosity that allows her to take adventures, even as an elderly woman. And Feather is a former hippie as well as an artist whose interest in the Goddess religion leads her to some intriguing adventures in Mexico, the place they visit together. Once I found their names, it was easy for me to follow them on their quest.

When I was writing Bone Songs, the name I first chose for the heroine, a larger-than-life woman (she’s over six foot tall and full-bodied) from Southern Mexico, was Lupita. I knew that the novel started with a tornado that hit the small Canadian town of Weed, Alberta. But I couldn’t get inside this female. She evaded me.

Around that time, my husband and I visited Mexico City. When we landed, a driver was waiting to take us to a resort we had booked into in Cuernavaca, a small town a two-hour drive away. At each curve we approached, I noticed the words “Curva Peligrosa” and recognized the Spanish for dangerous curve. That’s when it hit me that this was my character’s name. Once I found it, her personality blossomed immediately. I could hear the sound of her voice, her laugh. I knew what she looked like (she resembles Katy Jurado, the once-famous Mexican actress that appeared in High Noon) and the book took off.

That’s my story of how my invented worlds become populated. Have others had a similar experience?

 

 

 

 

 

Filed under: Links Tagged: bone songs,

Book Marketing 101: Part Four

Though I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I recently did readings while spending a week at Sea Ranch, a coastal community in Mendocino about three hours from my home. The conventional wisdom is that readings are more productive in areas where we have family, friends, or acquaintances. That might be true in some instances, usually at bookstores. But there are exceptions. And that’s what this post is about.

I thought that while I was in the Sea Ranch area, I would try to book events so I could get a broader readership for my novel Fling! I first contacted the only bookstore in Gualala, a tiny town just a few miles from where we were renting a house. I was surprised at how enthusiastic the owner was about reserving a late Saturday afternoon slot during our week in the area. He told me that the venue has a healthy clientele of mostly regulars but also of those visiting the coast. Since there isn’t much entertainment locally, many residents are eager to attend something out of the ordinary. The owner also recommended that I contact the Point Arena library, a half hour drive further up the coast. And he put me in touch with Peggy, the host of one of the local radio stations so she could interview me.

I followed up and was delighted when Julia at the library signed me up for the Sunday afternoon at the library series. She was also eager to offer her usual visitors an inspiring talk and/or reading. I had planned to frame my discussion of Fling! with a talk on “The Magic in Magical Realism.” Again, Point Arena is another small town whose inhabitants are hungry for enriching programs.

Each of these venues did a great job of advertising its event with flyers, notices on their websites, and postings in the local papers. I happened to pick up the Coastal Observer when I was there, eager to read the local news, and was amazed to find a quarter page write up about myself, something I didn’t expect.

While I was at Sea Ranch, KGUA, the public radio station, did a 25-minute interview with me that featured my upcoming readings and allowed me to give extensive info on myself and my work. I later learned there is another station in Gualala, KTDE, a commercial one, that also would have interviewed me if I’d contacted them, which I will do in the future. In addition, I discovered that authors should submit some sample questions beforehand to the station so the interviewer has material to work with.

This experience helped me to broaden my horizon for doing readings and giving talks. Intimate rural towns can be great resources. They often are hungry for the kind of events that big city residents take for granted.

What has your experience been in booking readings outside of the mainstream?

Filed under: Links Tagged: book marketing, fling, four-eyed frog, gualala, KGUA, KTDE, literary readings, magical realism, mendocino coast, Pen-L Publishing, point arena library, sea ranch

The Magic in Magical Realism Part 2: The Mystery in Magical Realism

I ended my first magical realism blog post, “The Magic in Magical Realism,” with the following passage: The writer confronts reality and tries to untangle it, to discover what is mysterious in things, in life, in human acts. The principle thing is not the creation of imaginary beings or worlds but the discovery of the mysterious relationship between our circumstances and us. The magical realist does not try to copy the surrounding reality but to seize the mystery that breathes behind things.

I realize that these observations deserve some explication. Magical realism isn’t the only way art, and in this instance literature, reveals truths that otherwise might not be recognizable. Most literary writers are trying to understand in a more profound way the dynamics between individuals and groups. They’re probing everyday events for what might be hidden. It isn’t unlike what Don DeLillo’s character Artis in Zero K observes:

I’m aware that when we see something, we are getting only a measure of information, a sense, an inkling of what really is there to see. I don’t know the details or the terminology but I do know that the optic nerve is not telling the full truth. We’re seeing only intimations. The rest is our invention, our way of reconstructing what is actual, if there is any such thing, philosophically, as what we call actual.

Artis could be speaking for the writer/artist who knows that our ordinary vision, our way of apprehending the world and its contents, is limited. Probing the actual, then, is what writers and also visual artists attempt. I’m thinking of Anthony Marra’s recent collection of linked short stories The Tsar of Love and Techno. By taking his readers inside the fractured world of Chechnya and the former USSR between the 1930s, the present, and even beyond, he reveals the tragic consequences of Stalinist Russia and surroundings. In the book, art both reveals and conceals, as when a painter from the first story is forced to censor photographs and paintings. He airbrushes a ballerina out of a photograph, changes other pictures to make Stalin look better, and obliterates his brother’s face from a family photo because his brother’s religious beliefs made him a traitor in the harsh environment of the communist regime. Yet he later paints his brother’s face in the background of every painting he is charged with altering.

This action demonstrates the power artists have, whether writers or visual artists, to alter what we call reality or the actual. What we think we are perceiving can suddenly shift. We easily can be deluded into believing what is being presented visually when in actuality there is little basis for its veracity. Donald Trump is an expert at creating this type of illusion by using his experience in so-called reality TV shows. But, aside from Trump’s slight of hand, we are constantly struggling to strip away the veils that obscure our understanding of things in the hope we’ll come closer to whatever reality is.

Writers who employ magical realism have a unique approach. They don’t try to delude the reader into thinking what is presented on the page is real in the sense it is something that could actually happen. Instead, the narrative leans more in the opposite direction, presenting images/descriptions that the reader understands are not true to our lived life but still contain an even more persuasive reality.

In my novel Bone Songs, to be released early in 2017, the main character, Curva Peligrosa, travels the Old North Trail alone from Southern Mexico to Southern Alberta over the course of twenty years. She started this journey with her twin brother Xavier when they were in their teens, but they got lost and ended up in the fictional town of Berumba, a place they had read about in a novel, and Xavier got killed there. We all know we can’t actually visit fictional worlds; they only exist in our imaginations. Yet Bone Songs suggests that in a certain way we actually do inhabit these creations. They become more real in some instances than our everyday lives. (A woman who came to a recent reading of mine said the characters in the novels she reads are so present to her that she has to wait a few months before starting another book.)

It turns out that Curva has unusual abilities. Not only does she have divination skills, but phantom streams and sink holes often surface when she appears. She also has created a tropical greenhouse in Alberta that thrives because of her connection to the natural world. She has brought avocado seeds with her from Mexico, and they become healthy trees that produce that wonderful fruit in an inhospitable climate. Other fruits and vegetables flourish under her care, and the greenhouse attracts visitors from all over the area.

But what is the point of Curva being this kind of fecund individual? Why should a reader trust her to unveil anything? Curva’s larger than life presence (she actually is over six-foot-tall and a full-bodied woman) reminds the reader that women do have some amazing abilities, yet they aren’t always recognized, hidden beneath the usual misconceptions we have about females. Curva breaks though many of those notions, not wanting to follow the traditional path. Instead, she prefers to create her own trail and to pursue a life free from the type of demands her mother faced. Curva is trying to expand the boundaries of ordinary life so there is room for someone like her to thrive. This approach forces her to explore the mysteries of being human and to reach an understanding that allows her to live both within conventional society and outside it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed under: Links Tagged: magic realism; anthony marra; the tsar of love and techno; don delillo; zero k; magic; literature; literary; donald trump; bone songs; curva peligrosa;