Muse

The Road, a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, was published in 2006, and is 241 pages.  I read it in two days–with most of it done in one sitting until 1:00 AM–fully aware that I had to wake up at 6:45 today.  It was the most haunting, nightmarish, savage book I’ve ever read, and I recommend it highly.

The setting is post-apocalyptic America, several years after some sort of mass devastation.  McCarthy never actually states if it the result of sudden climate change, nuclear war, or if it was cosmically orchestrated, but that really doesn’t matter. 

A father and a son are on a journey to find civilization or inhabitable land.  They travel through bitter winter, rain, and snow in an ash- covered landscape, picking the bones of abandoned homes, trains, and boats for scraps useful to their survival.  They encounter few survivors, but those they do meet are a constant threat.  Cannibalism is rampant, and what’s left of humanity is barely more than the animal of its nature.

The book is as much a psychological journey as it is physical.  I put myself in the father’s shoes and imagined what I would have done.  The first time he wonders if he will be able to “do it” when the time comes I’m horrified.  As the novel moves on, I wonder why he just doesn’t “do it.”  Then I’m horrified at my own savage inner workings and hopelessness.

The book is bleak, but there is a tiny, tiny morsel of hope that hovers throughout–tiny moments of victory–that allow the man and the boy a shred of faith, and the reader a bit of sustenance to keep her going.  The experiences of the father and son, however, assured me that in the event of global devastation I’ll run toward certain annihilation, rather than away from it, because it is the survivors who suffer most.  I also keep looking out the window at the spectrum of color and beauty to remind myself that The Road was just a book, and to be thankful for the things I take for granted each day.

I don’t often recommend you walk with your eyes open into a waking nightmare, but I do recommend that you read The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. 

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I saw that the movie version of the book is coming out in October.  I can’t say that I want to live this story again, but here is a link to the trailer.

bird by bird by Anne Lamott, was published in 1994, and is 237 pages.  It is, perhaps, the most recommended book for writers I’ve seen, so I had to read it. The subtitle of the book is Some Instructions on Writing and Life, and the book provides just that.  It is an enjoyable read in its instruction because the author is humorous and irreverent, which is refreshing in a “how to” book. 

I’ll do with this review what I did with my review of Writing Down the Bones.  I’ll post some quotes and highlights.  If you are a writer, this book is a must read.  If you’re married to, are family of, or friends with a writer, it is also a must read.  It explains our psychology, our quirks, and our drive, and will allow you to understand us a little bit better than you did before.  It is for acquaintances of writers what Al-Anon is for acquaintances of those in AA.  Not that writers have a disease, but, well…you know what I’m saying.

• Lamott quotes E. L. Doctorow by saying that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night.  You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”    (p 18)
• In answer to writers as perfectionists: “Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it’s going to get.  Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move.”       (p. 29)
• On narrators needing to be as likable as a really interesting friend: “When you have a friend like this, she can say, ‘Hey, I’ve got to drive to the dump in Petaluma–wanna come along?’ and you honestly can’t think of anything in the world you’d rather do.”  (p 50)
• On flawed characters: “They shouldn’t be too perfect; perfect means shallow and unreal and fatally uninteresting.”  (p. 50)
• In her chapter on how to know when your writing is finished and ready for submission: “There’s an image I’ve heard people in recovery use–that getting all of one’s addictions under control is a little like putting an octopus to bed.” (p. 93)
• On writer’s block: “The word block suggests that you are constipated or stuck, when the truth is that you’re empty.”  (p. 178)
• On the advice of a doctor about her dying friend:  “Watch her carefully right now…because she’s teaching you how to live.” (p. 179)
• On worrying that the content of your book might offend readers, “Write as if your parents are dead.” (p. 199)
• On the necessity of truth in writing: “Truth seems to want expression.  Unacknowledged truth saps your energy and keeps you and your characters wired and delusional.” (p. 199)
• On why we read and write: “Because of the spirit…Because of the heart.  Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation.  They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.”  (p. 237)

Books like bird by bird are good for writers because they articulate the joys and challenges of the craft, and decrease writer’s isolation.  I’ll return to this book in the future–as I will return to Writing Down the Bones and On Writing–for affirmation and instruction.

As much as I love historical fiction, and drawn as I am to books about art and artists, how in the world did I never before read this author?  The good news is that now that I have found Sarah Dunant I have a feast of her books to consume.  And consume them, I will. 

The Birth of Venus was published in 2003 by Random House, and is 391 pages.  It tells the story of Alessandra Cecci–the spirited, intelligent, and artistic daughter of a 15th century Florentine merchant–torn between love and duty.  Her marriage to a man many years her senior (and her opposite in many other ways), and her infatuation with a troubled painter from Northern Europe, both serve to liberate and confine her in their complexities.  Set against the political and religious turmoil of the time, The Birth of Venus, provides a fascinating window to one family’s struggles. 

What I most loved about the novel was the character of Alessandra.  She is captured perfectly.  In her infatuation with the painter: “I felt a small explosion of fire somewhere inside me.”  (p 29)  Her difficult relationship with her siblings: “I cannot pinch you as I used to.  You might go into labor and I could not bear your screams.  But once your baby is born I can pinch it with impunity, since it will be years until it can blame me.” (p 102)  Her great capacity for love: “I have heard it said that in heaven even the substance of matter is changed by the light of God, so that you can look through solid things to see what lies beyond.  As the light turned to dusk in my cell that night, I think I could for that moment see through his body to the very soul of him.” (p 378.)  And on….

At its best, historical fiction illuminates unknown times and places in history, while entertaining the reader.  I knew little about the Medici state versus the religious fervor of the time. I didn’t know that there were African slaves in Florence at the time.  The references to art in the book sent me searching around the internet to find out more about the painters mentioned.  It sparked my imagination.

The Birth of Venus is sexually and violently graphic–but not gratuitous.  The writing style is Tracy Chevalier (Girl With the Pearl Earring) meets Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl.)  Dunant just published a novel, Sacred Hearts, and has another historical novel, In The Company of the Courtesan.  I look forward to reading them both.

Writing is isolating. 

Writers work in isolation.  We get strange looks when we try to explain our compulsion to write.  Even if it drives us crazy we must write daily or we don’t feel…right. 

Every now and then we come out of our coffee-stained work spaces for critique groups, or readings, or conferences, or book clubs and are given the sustenance we need to go back into the hole. 

And we do need these little blasts of humanity. 

I happen to need more than the occasional blast, so I’ve taken to social media very well. These little sound-bite relationships give me what I need to return to the page to write fiction.  Do I also use them to procrastinate?–Absolutely!–but I feel refreshed when I read other writers’ blogs or Tweets or Facebook updates.  I learn more about process, marketing, and publishing from these writers.  Providing my own blog posts and updates allows me to flex my other, non-fiction-related writing muscles.  It gives me balance and perspective. It also helps create a web presence, which publishers these days are so keen on. 

I have many of these on my blogroll, but I wanted to highlight some of my favorite agent, writer, and publishing blogs that help me feel a bit more connected to the world.  They help validate what I go through with writing through their shared experiences.  And most important, they give me free advice.  Some are sweet, some are snarky, but all are invaluable.  This is, by no means, a comprehensive list, but it’s a snapshot of some must-reads.

Jenny Bent, Agent

Nathan Bransford, Agent

Kristin Nelson, Agent

Janet Reid, Agent

Rachelle Gardner, Agent

Writer Unboxed

Amanda Craig, Author

Jane Green, Author

Editor Unleashed

Mediabistro

Go there.  Learn.  Get connected.

In the few months since the release of my book, Receive Me Falling, I’ve been to twelve book clubs.  I’ve known some members, others I’ve met by selling books at fairs, festivals, and signings.  I’ve even met a few on Meetups.com.  The average book club size is ten members.  All but three of the hundred or so members have been women.  Almost all of them choose books based on word of mouth recommendations. 

Each book club has its own personality.  Some meet at book stores, and some meet at private homes.  Some get together to discuss books, others get together to get out of the house and drink.   Some book clubs use the questions for discussion from my website, others use their own.  Some are very casual about attendance, others have names, mascots, and meeting dates in stone.

Receive Me Falling is set on a haunted, Caribbean, sugar plantation in two time periods.  The ghostly music coming form the plantation house, Eden, is Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.  The main character from the present day has a binder of rum recipes in her villa.  The climax of the book occurs during a severe storm. Several book clubs have prepared Caribbean themed food, rum drinks from the book, and have streamed Moonlight Sonata from the IPOD while we met to discuss the book.  At one meeting, a terrible storm arrived just as we were discussing the climax.  I don’t know how they arranged that.

In spite of the personality of each club, what I encounter over and over again, is passion for books.  When it’s time to pick the next book, the club becomes animated.  Some groups heatedly debate future books, others are more polite, but there’s always a sense of anticipation and excitement that comes over the room–over books!

I choose my own reading selections (outside of what authors and publishers send me to review for my blog) based on the frequency I hear a book mentioned.  For example, I’ve heard about The Red Tent and The Road so many times over the last month that I’ve bought them.  I’m almost superstitious about hearing a book mentioned multiple times.  I feel like the opening of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society when it says that books find those who are meant to read them.

Publishers have a harder time selling fiction than nonfiction, because it is voodoo.  It’s very difficult to see through the haze in the crystal ball and predict what will resonate with readers.  It seems that no matter how much marketing money is put into a novel, word of mouth recommendation is the way books gain momentum.   If readers feel passion for a book, they will be its advocate.  

It’s a great joy to get so much positive feedback on my book, and to see people discussing books in a shared, community experience. It’s fascinating how books touch different people in different ways, and how a single book can be loved and hated by different readers.  I think it’s a bit like finding love (though much simpler.)  Certain books touch us because they speak to our souls.  I hope that the shared experience of Receive Me Falling is able to send out those ever widening circles of recommendation that are necessary for wide readership.  But whatever the end result, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my book club experiences so far.

“All you have to do is write one true sentence.” 

Ernest Hemingway

TodayInLiterature.com  has interesting and useless literary tidbits and factoids to ponder each day.  When I checked in this morning, I was delighted to see Hemingway’s picture, and that on August 13th, 1923, he published his first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems. 

In case you don’t know, anything related to Hemingway is my delight right now, because I am immersed in Hemingway research for a novel set in depression-era Key West.  I drink, read, and dream Papa, and feel a great, cosmic connection to him.  People are sick of me talking about him.  It’s become an obsession. 

And his mantra, to write “one true sentence” follows me.  It haunts me.  I look at his face on the cover of a big book of historic Hemingway photos sitting on my desk and wish I could run everything by him.  Is it authentic enough–weaving these characters from reports and photos of real life people?  I piece together their dimensions from the judgments of others, but then I come across a photo that reveals a new aspect of one of them, and I know there are flaws in the research.

Take Hemingway’s second wife, Pauline.  Biographers largely regard her as a husband stealer and a bad mother.  Their judgments seep into my portrayal of her.   Then I went to Boston to do some research in the JFK Museum (which has 90% of the Hemingway archive) and found three pictures of Pauline that revealed the strength of her connections with Hemingway and her children.  The photos caused me to add another layer to Pauline’s character in my novel–one more vulnerable, loving, and connected to her family. 

One of the pictures shows Pauline laughing with Hemingway; and Hemingway is not just laughing, his head is thrown back in a roar. It is a moment of complete joy, captured perfectly on film.  Then there’s a photo of Pauline holding one of her children as a baby, and standing next to her other son.  She and her son are smiling at the baby, who is grinning from ear to ear, and they are the picture of familial happiness.  The final picture is Pauline on a porch gazing through the camera at Hemingway, who took the picture.  The picture made me want to look away because of its raw, open longing–from both the photographer and from the subject.   It was clearly an intimate, personal moment, and there I was, over seventy years later–a researcher, in a dark, cold basement–handling this private photo.   

Through Hemingway’s words, Today in Literature reminded me that my charge is to capture these people true-ly.  To capture their likenesses, their mannerisms, their passions, and struggles. To do honor to my subjects in true sentences.

Last Train to Paradise by Les Standiford was published by Crown Publishers in 2002 and is 259 pages.  I did not intend to review a research book for my Hemingway novel for this blog, but it was so fascinating that I have to recommend it.

The book is an account of entrepreneur, Henry Flagler, and his dream to create a railroad that reached the southernmost point of the United States, connecting vacationers and residents to the sandy beaches and palm dotted islands he found to be paradise.  Flagler grew up poor, but grew in business and ended up a partner with John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil.  Rather than reinvest his fortune to grow his wealth, he embarked upon the nearly impossible railroad project that would meet much criticism, drain his wealth, and consume his time and energy for the conclusion of his life.    The book provides a brief biography of Flagler, but moves on to detail the literal rise and fall of the railroad to Key West.   It also shows how Flagler’s railroad–which brought people to places in Florida untouched by settlers–made the state the vacationers’ paradise it is today.  Cities like St. Augustine, Palm Beach, and Miami rose solely because of Flagler’s vision and investment. 

Though the book looks favorably on Flagler, consistent throughout it is the judgment on him and other’s who push the limits of what humans can achieve, and the devastating results of Nature’s fury.  Much of the book explains the hazardous working conditions of the men who built the railroad, the string of hurricanes that resulted in so much damage and loss of life and property, and the final devastating blow of the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 that destroyed the railroad and hundreds of WW1 vets working on the Overseas Highway. 

I found myself thinking of Babel and the Titanic while reading this book.  Those who take on these projects have an “at any cost” attitude toward them.  They lose all sense of reason to achieve their dreams.  It seems that whenever Man thinks he has created the unsinkable, the indestructible, and the all-reaching, Nature reminds him of the Truth of impermanence.  When men try to be like gods, they find that they are so much less. 

I read an article recently that Bill Gates thinks he has found a way to prevent hurricanes.  Hurricanes gain strength by passing over warm water.  His idea is to pump thousands of gallons of cold water from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico up to the surface whenever hurricanes threaten the gulf coast.  At first read I thought it sounded brilliant.   There would never be another Katrina.  People’s homes and lives would be preserved.  Man will have conquered Nature.

But then it dawned on me that Man cannot conquer Nature.  We can have no understanding of the effects of so dramatically altering currents and weather patterns.  It would have implications we can’t even begin to comprehend. 

To me, the bridge to Key West, the Titanic, Babel, hurricane prevention,  space travel, cloning, fertility (hello, Octomom), and even the current economic conditions we face in America all represent areas of dangerous ground for human beings.  Most of us believe in God (or gods, or an “Other”), and over and over it is seems that when humans try to be gods, we suffer great consequences for it.  It seems we will never learn that all of this is temporary.  All of this is impermanent.

I don’t know that Mr. Standiford meant to incite these feelings in readers of Last Train to Paradise, but it certainly did in me.  It showed that we have a lot to learn from the mistakes and successes of the past, and it shed light on a fascinating piece of American history.   I highly recommend this book.

Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg, was published in 1986.  My writing partner, Kelly, recommended that I read it, and I”m forever grateful to her for it.  The book is presented as a series of essays on the writing process with strong ties to the Zen practice.  It is simple, straightforward, and profound.  Rather than review it as I would fiction, I’d like to list some of quotes I found most interesting and thought-provoking.  I encourage you to pick up this book if you are a writer (or want to be one.)  The selections aren’t enough on their own–the context of each episode is integral to their understanding.  The quotes, however, will get you started exploring some of the nuances of writing that will give you the sense of peace and freedom you need to build the courage to write.

• “There is no security, no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago, we will do it again. … Every time is a new journey with no maps.”  (p. 5)

• “We don’t exist in any solid form.  There is no permanent truth you can corner in a poem that will satisfy you forever.  Don’t identify too strongly with your work.  Stay fluid behind those black-and-white words.  They are not you.  They were a great moment going through you.  A moment you were awake enough to write down and capture.”  (p 33)

• “Be specific.  Don’t say ‘fruit.’ Tell what kind of fruit–”It is a pomegranate.”  Give things the dignity of their names.”  (p. 70)

• “Contrary to popular belief, a writer is no Prometheus alone on a hill full of fire.  We are very arrogant to think we alone have a totally original mind.  We are carried on the backs of all the writers who came before us. ” (p. 79)

• “We are not separate from everything else.  It’s only our egos that make us think we are.  We build on what came before us, even if our writing is a reaction to it or we try to negate the past.” (p. 80)

• “All writers, at some level, want to be known.  Here is a chance to bring your reader deeper into your heart.  You can explain with deep knowledge what it means to be a Catholic, a man, a southerner, a black person, a woman, a homosexual, a human being.  You know it better than anyone else.  In knowing who you are and writing from it, you will help the world by giving it understanding.”  (p. 146)

• “This is important to know.  We have an idea that success is a happy occasion.  Success can also be lonely, isolating, disappointing.  It makes sense that it is everything. ” (p. 170)

I was recently talking to a friend of mine who owns an independent bookstore and coffee shop in Annapolis, and he said his sons hadn’t voluntarily picked up a book in their lives, and hadn’t read a book since graduating from college.  This stunned me.  Then it saddened me.  How many kids are forever traumatized by the books they were forced to read in school.  I’m afraid the effects are broader than I’d previously realized. 

So imagine my joy last week when I walked into the local library with my three boys to hear them gasp in delight.  In honor of Harry Potter’s birthday, the entire place was transformed into Hogwarts.  The boys ran around checking out the posters, lego displays, costumes, and giant chess board.  It was very satisfying to see them get such a thrill because of their connections to book characters.  Kudos to the library for bringing books to life for children and encouraging a positive response to reading. 

I, of course, have loved reading my whole life.  It’s hard for me to imagine what it’s like not to always have a book to read.  In my visits to local book clubs discussing my book, I’ve found so many book lovers who have had such positive reading experiences.  I just saw this article, today, that asserts that just six minutes of reading a day can decrease stress levels by 68%.  I can’t believe that everyone doesn’t do it!

Hopefully my boys will maintain the level of excitement they currently have throughout their schooling.  Hopefully they will have teachers who bring literature to life for them.  Their experience at the library was magical!