Muse

The Annapolis Bookstore is a charming, little shop on Maryland Avenue piled with books from floor to ceiling. They have a bed (see front window) where customers can “read in bed“, a piano, and an inviting children’s book nook. 

The store is organized exactly the way my shelves are organized at home. Browsing there was like cooking in someone else’s kitchen who kept all of their utensils and pots just where I did–everything was at my fingertips.

Books new and old, local and national, crisp and heavily-loved sit next to each other on the shelves.   I bought The Reader and Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story.  I was excited about the Hemingway find because it was full of pictures of him in Key West that I’d never seen before, which will help me with my new novel.

The Annapolis Bookstore has agreed to carry my book, Receive Me Falling.   I will also be selling my book outside of the store on Sunday, April 26th from 2-4 for Maryland Avenue’s annual Spring Fling.  I hope to see you there.

My sense of urgency for finishing my Hemingway novel increased today when I read this article on Galleycat.   It looks like Anthony Hopkins will play Hemingway in an upcoming film directed by Andy Garcia.  I broke into a cold sweat when I saw the headline, but my heart rate slowed when I saw that the film is about Hemingway’s later years.   My novel is about his time in Key West in his 30s.  And while Hemingway is a central charater in my novel, it’s really about my protagonist–a fictious housekeeper in the Hemingway household. 

The movie is still being written so I have some time.  My goal is to have a complete first draft by the end of July.  (I have about 70 pages so far.)  It will be nice to see Hemingway in the media when querying agents about my manuscript because publishing tends to follow trends.  If I’m shopping a Hemingway novel while a movie is out, it will work out well.  If I follow a movie by months and months, I’ve missed it.  One has to be careful, however.  Harry Potter resulted in millions of wizardly knock-offs. The same is true for vampire stories following Twilight.  I wouldn’t want to be thought of as chasing a trend, and end up in the slush pile. 

But I’m not, so hopefully, that would  come across.  And truly, I don’t think the popular buzz that followed blockbusters like Harry Potter and Twilight would come from a Hemingway movie.  I don’t see scores of people pushing out Hemingway manuscripts in response to this movie.

Anyway, must stop blogging.  Must start writing…

If you’re in Annapolis Mall on Saturday, May 16th, stop by Borders. I’ll be doing a signing from 2-4 PM.

Hope to see you there!

No, this isn’t my tatoo, but if I ever got one, it would look something like this.  (I have an Alice in Wonderland fascination, and I collect editions of the book.) 

Today’s galleycat blog linked up to a website called contrariwise, devoted to tattoos born of literary inspiration from books, music, and poetry.   I love tattoos, and I’ve always secretly wanted one.  Of course, I’d never have the nerve, but it’s fun to think about. 

I don’t know how I’d pick just one passage, but it might have to be that perfect denouement in Steinbeck’s East of Eden where every struggle put forth in the story is validated, and promise of the future is summed up in a word: 

timshel 

Film is a natural extension of literature, but how often do people lament that movies never meet the expectations raised by books?  Well, of course!  There are no limits or budgets to the imagination.  But movies are magic. It’s a surreal experience to see your book-generated fantasies and imaginings on a larger than life screen. 

It’s true that movies almost never measure up to the written word, but rather than dwell on that, why not watch the film as an interpretation of a book rather than a copy of a book?  Dr. Kathy Brown of Stevenson University has a book coming out in June called Teaching Literary Theory Using Film Adaptations.  As a student of Dr. Brown’s years ago, I explored the idea of film as literary interpretation in her classes.  It really helped me validate the use of movies as an extension of literature in ways I hadn’t before considered. 

In recent months I’ve seen several movies that I have either a) liked better than the book, or b) made me like the book more than I had before seeing the movie.  I liked the movie The Jane Austen Book Club better than the book. (Thanks for the recommendation, Heather!)  The movie, Atonement, was a great complement for the book.  I liked the movie for Cold Mountain as much as the book–okay, more, because of Jude Law.

Finally, the inspiration for this post is a trailer I saw today for one of my all-time favorite books.  I can’t wait to see how it measures up.

http://wherethewildthingsare.warnerbros.com/

I had a great, bookish morning.

It started with a productive hour working on my Hemingway novel at an Annapolis coffee shop.  It was nice to get away from my desk and computer at home where  I constantly drift away from writing to tend to little ones, email, facebook, twitter, housework, phone calls, puppy dogs, etc.  That’s all lovely, but it’s nice to carve out a couple of hours to devote just to writing.  Amazing how much I can get done.  (I also found a book there called Mozart’s Women, that I can’t wait to read.) 

Then I went to the bookstore at St. John’s College, which is one of my favorite independent bookstores.  It’s especially cool because the bookstore is underground in a building that’s a couple of hundred years old, busting with books from floor to ceiling.  It’s full of classics, charm, and undiscovered treasures, and I’m pleased to say that it now also carries my book, Receive Me Falling. I really can’t say enough nice things about the amiable Robin and Crystal who so obligingly agreed to sell my book, and took the time to chat with me about writing, and publishing, and travel.  

Stop in some time and see what you can find.  You won’t be disappointed.

(Picture courtesy of www.sylviaplathinfo.com)

I read with sadness in today’s NYTimes Books section that Nicholas Hughes, son of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, died by hanging himself on the 16th of March.   Nicholas was a fisheries biologist in Alaska, who was said to have suffered from depression for many years.

His mother, the famed poet and Bell Jar author, Sylvia Plath, died by suicide when Nicholas was a baby, following an affair by her husband, Ted Hughes, with Assia Wevill.  Ms. Wevill, Nicholas’ stepmother, then killed herself and her four year old daughter six years later. 

I came to love Sylvia Plath in college when I studied her poetry.  I enjoyed her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, but I found the real treasure in a collection of her short stories, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams.  Ironically, Ted Hughes wrote the introduction and appears to have had some say in the reverse chronological organization of the stories, prose, and diary excerpts.  Moving backward from the stories she completed in her blackest time before her death, to the stories of her youth was brilliant and profound.  It redeemed her, restored her, and had the feel of an end of life flashback.   The final story is about a father who keeps bees (like her own father had) and his death.  Sylvia Plath is written as having almost resented her own father for his death in her youth, and that comes across in the final lines of the story:

“Father,” she said in a small pleading voice.  “Father.”  But he did not hear, whithdrawn as he was into the core of himself, insulated against the sound of her supplicant voice.  Lost and betrayed, she slowly turned away and left the room.  That was the last time that Alice Denway saw her father.  She did not know then that in all the rest of her life there would be no one to walk with her, like him, proud and arrogant among the bumblebees.” (327)

I have some audiorecordings of Sylvia Plath reading her own poetry on cassette tapes.  (I have nowhere to play them now, but that’s beside the point.)  On the tapes, side one was recorded several years before her death; side two just several months before her death. The drop in octave of her voice is chilling–as if the life was gone while she still breathed. 

And here I am going on about her when it was her son who died. 

What a tragic legacy. 

Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam is a drama turned black comedy about the former lovers of a deceased woman, who make a pact that ends in disaster.  The book opens in London at the funeral of Molly Lane as her lovers–a celebrated composer, a newspaper editor, and a high ranking politician–interact with each other and her widowed and loathed husband.  Unusual circumstances emerge, friendships taken to higher levels of trust implode when tested, scandal erupts, and people are exposed for better or worse.

This book is disturbing.  It is one of the few books I have read without a moral protagonist.  Everyone in the book is unsavory–from the deceased, to the widower, to the composer, to the editor, to the politician.  They are all underhanded and foul. 

But I loved the book.  McEwan is a master because he is able to accomplish what great writers can accomplish:  making the reader root for the success of the bad guy.  I also loved the book because it focused on the composer (the most sympathetic of the characters) and took us through his creative process for writing a symphony. I imagine it would be tedious for some, but I couldn’t help but compare his writing process with my own.  The highs and lows, bursts and lulls, the strange places from which  ideas emerge.  “Sometimes Clive worked so hard on a piece that he could lose sight of his purpose–to create this pleasure at once so sensual and abstract, to translate into vibrating air this nonlanguage whose meanings were forever just beyond reach, suspended tantalizingly at a point where emotion and intellect fused.” (172) Love that. 

McEwan reminds me of Fitzgerald in his wisdom at reading and exposing human motive and emotion.  When the composer is hurt by the editor for not taking him seriously, he ruminates on all the ways his friend has failed him.  “Clive stared ahead at the empty seat opposite, lost to the self-punishing convolutions of his fervent social accounting, unknowingly bending and coloring the past through the prism of his unhappiness.” (71)  How often do we do this?

I was so pleased upon looking at the “Author’s Works” list at the beginning of the novel to see that McEwan has so many books I haven’t read.  (I got the same rush when I thought I’d completed all the Jane Austen books and saw that she had written one more almost complete novel, Sandition, that I’d had yet to read.) 

I am aware that McEwan is a “writer’s writer” so I won’t recommend this book far and wide, but I can’t wait to read the others.

First Sundays on West Street in Annapolis feature local visual and performing artists in an open air market.  You can listen to music while you browse crafts, art, and literature.  First Sundays run from May through October.

I’ll be selling and signing books on First Sunday, June 7th from 12-5.  If you’re in the Annapolis area, stop by and say hi! 

On this St. Patrick’s Day, let us celebrate the Irish by honoring their fabulous writers and listing my favorite works by them.  I happen to be partial to the Irish because, well, I am one. 

1. Oscar Wilde

a) An Ideal Husband is a perfect little play about the difficulties that arise for a “perfect” man with faults, and an imperfect man who makes good choies.  While the tone is light, strong messages about conventional love and dangerous ideals run throughout.  It has a Jane Austen feel.

b) The Picture of Dorian Gray is Wilde’s only novel, and well worth reading.  After becoming the subject of a portrait, a vain man sells his soul to keep his physical beauty while his portrait must age.  The more corrupt he becomes, the more the portrait–a reflection of his soul and true physical body–ages and becomes grotesque.  It has a Poe feel.

2)  Frank McCourt

a)  Angela’s Ashes is the first in McCourt’s series of memoirs of life growing up poor, Irish, and Catholic.  Its text is both charming and sober.

b) ‘Tis is the second memoir dealing with McCourt’s early adulthood in New York City.

3)  James Joyce

a) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce’s thinly veiled memoir through his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, as he rebels against his family and religion and moves to Paris. 

b) Ulysses–I’m sorry to say that I haven’t yet read this, but it is a continuation of Portrait, is controversial, and is, apparently, very ambitious.  I’ll have to get my hands on it soon.

4) Bram Stoker

a) Dracula (no description necessary.)

And my personal favorite…

5) C. S. Lewis

a)  Mere Christianity is Lewis’ account of how he transformed from an atheist to a Christian.  He literally reasons and proves his way to God.  Seriously.  A must read for all atheists, Christians, and anyone in between.

b) Abolition of Man is a heady tome about the insanity of expecting humanity out of society when we instruct it to live and work and think without a heart.  Short but dense.

c)  The Screwtape Letters is a fictional piece of letters between two demons–an uncle and his nephew.  The uncle demon instructs the nephew demon on how to ensnare and corrupt humans.  Its tone is light, but it is deeply disturbing.  I want to crawl under my bed and not come out for days when I finish it.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!