The Wednesday Web Browser

Advice for freelancers from Linda Formichelli: "Diversifying is good to a point, but you shouldn’t just add new products and services willy-nilly."

---

Amusing (and, based on my admittedly limited and long-ago experience, true!) take from Writer Abroad on being "Ameropean."

---

Monday night I finished reading Allegra Goodman's aforementioned new novel, The Cookbook Collector. A wonderful read! As I wrote in a note to the author, it's such a smart book, while being unassuming. That is to say, it's about as far from "in-your-face" with its own smartness as it can possibly be. I highly recommend it!

---

Over on my other blog, last week's Shabbat link list of Jewish literary news was especially extensive. If you're interested, please do check it out.

Friday Find: Hitting It Out of the Park--An Interview with Kim Wright

(A version of this interview also appears in the April 2010 issue of The Practicing Writer.)

HITTING IT OUT OF THE PARK: An Interview with Kim Wright

By Erika Dreifus

About seven years ago, when I was completing a low-residency program in creative writing, Kim Wright was brought in to talk to the graduating students about freelancing. Her talk that day helped fuel and organize my own post-graduate freelancing efforts, for which I have remained very grateful.

So when I saw that this veteran freelancer had become a debut novelist, I was intrigued. I asked Kim if she'd be willing to be interviewed. Happily, she agreed!

Kim Wright lives in Charlotte, N.C. She has been a nonfiction writer for 25 years, and Love in Mid Air (Grand Central Publishing, 2010) is her first novel. She is an adjunct faculty member of the low-residency M.F.A. program in creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte, and her hobbies are travel, wine collecting, and ballroom dance.

Please welcome Kim Wright!

ERIKA DREIFUS (ED): Kim, although you are a "debut" novelist, you are a veteran freelancer. When did fiction-writing become a part of your writing practice, and how did you begin to pursue it?

KIM WRIGHT (KW): Yes, I worked 25 years as a freelance nonfiction writer, but I always played around a little with fiction on the side. "Played around" may be the wrong term since I desperately wanted to write a novel. It's just that fiction is so tough to publish - relative to nonfiction, at least - that it always seemed like a bit of a pipedream.

I started Love in Mid Air about eight years ago and worked on it hard for two years. Then I put it down for two years and that break turned out to be really important in the life of the novel. Because when I picked it back up I was able to read it more objectively, almost as if someone else had written it. I slashed whole scenes, did a major revamp of the structure, cut out characters...all things that would have been hard to do earlier.

And through this whole process I continued to work on the craft elements of fiction by going to conferences, studying with people like [Queens MFA director] Fred Leebron, and creating my circle of "writing buddies" who are now my first readers and most trusted counsel. There are really three women scattered across the country who are my lifeblood in this process and I can't imagine having gone through this without them. A month I spent at MacDowell Colony was also pivotal, both to building my confidence and connecting me to some fellow writers whom I respect. My single biggest piece of advice for aspiring writers - especially novelists who work on things for so long at a time - is to assemble a support group. Open the door and walk out. You have to know people and I don't just mean people who can introduce you to their agents, although God knows that helps. I mean people who can help you survive the actual writing.

ED: Love in Mid-Air features a late thirtysomething protagonist, Elyse Bearden, who lives in Charlotte. As the novel opens, Elyse is on a flight and becomes acquainted with a fellow passenger (Gerry). The rest of the novel follows from this encounter. I'm curious about the sequence in which you wrote the book. Did you actually begin writing with the airplane and airport scenes? How challenging was it to integrate the several significant flashbacks (I'm thinking especially of scenes involving Elyse and her longtime best friend, Kelly) with the forward-moving narrative?

KW: In the beginning, the book covered a three- year time span. It started with Elyse separating from her husband and moving out with her child. She met the lover Gerry about mid-point in the book. I realized I needed more tension...plot and structure have always been the toughest elements of craft for me and, I suspect, other writers who come out of a literary background. So I tightened the time frame to nine months and had Elyse meet her lover before she leaves her husband.

This created two new problems. Some people might consider a woman who has an affair while married inherently unlikeable. Oh well, I can't help that. But the other problem was just as you say, that the tight time frame and faster pace made inserting the flashbacks trickier. I worked some of the flashback info into real-time conversations between Elyse and Kelly and tried to insert the other flashbacks into points where people tend to ruminate in real life, i.e., when Elyse is taking her walks, in the shower, or driving a car. Isn't that when we all start to think about the past?

ED: At some point in my reading, I began to discern connections between Love in Mid Air and Madame Bovary. Both books present us with a female protagonist, unhappy in her marriage, who is a mother to one child (a daughter). Both protagonists are married to health professionals (Charles Bovary is a quasi-medical doctor, and Elyse Bearden's husband is a dentist). Both Dr. Bovary and Dr. Bearden are loving fathers and basically decent men, if perhaps unfortunate matches for their wives. And, for their respective eras, both books include some pretty steamy material. Then, late in your novel, Madame Bovary actually becomes part of a discussion among Elyse and her friends. With all of that said: Did you deliberately give Elyse Bearden the same initials as Emma Bovary? To what extent were you conscious of previous literature dealing with infidelity and/or divorce and how did those works inspire (or limit) you in the writing process?

KW: I don't think anyone else has noticed the EB connection between Elyse Bearden and Emma Bovary so go to the head of the class!!! (Editor's Note: My undergraduate and graduate teachers in French history and literature will be pleased to hear this!) Yes, I was very conscious of Madame Bovary while writing the book and a lot of the connections you've commented on were deliberate. When the women read Madame Bovary for their book club I have Elyse say that she thinks Emma would have gotten away with it if she'd only had a cell phone. I've always liked that line because it's the sort of thought that triggered my desire to pay homage to Flaubert's book in the first place. Would a modern-day Emma Bovary not only survive, but thrive?

ED: Where were you when you found out about the starred review Love in Mid Air received from Publishers Weekly? (A starred review that begins, I may add, with the words "Wright hits it out of the park in her debut....") What was it like to receive that review? What happened after that in terms of plans to promote and publicize the novel?

KW: I sold the book in December of 2007 and Grand Central said they'd bring it out in March 2010. It seemed like I was going to have to wait forever. Then 2008 and 2009 were pretty bad years for me, not just because of the long countdown to publication but because of all sorts of things that happened in my personal life. I was in a major funk.

So on Monday, January 4, the first working day of the new year, I get up, get my coffee and stumble into my computer and there it is waiting in my in-box, a starred review from Publishers Weekly. I literally screamed. And to make it even better, I had said to a friend at a Christmas party, "All I really want is for somebody somewhere to tell me that I knocked it out of the park, but no one ever says that in publishing. Publishing is about always feeling that you're getting closer but you're never there. They just never pay you those kinds of full out, no holds barred compliments." And then there it was in the review, a first line saying the very words "hits it out of the park." It changed my life. Everyone started paying more attention. And I have the feeling 2010 is going to be a bloody great year for me.

ED: Is there anything else you'd like us to know, Kim?

KW: That I am the most accessible person in the world. I'd love to speak to book clubs, either virtually or in person, I'm always available for interviews online or in any other format, and I love to speak to groups. (Editor's note: Anyone who would like to arrange an interview, signing, book club meeting, etc., should contact Kim's publicist, Elly.Weisenberg[at]hbgusa[dot]com.) And also that I'm working on both a second and a third book. One is a sequel to Love in Mid Air, told from the point of view of Kelly and advancing the story ten years when the women are almost fifty. The other is about the world of ballroom dance. Kind of Love in Mid Air Meets Dancing With the Stars.

ED: Sounds great! Congratulations and thank you, Kim!

To learn more about Kim Wright and her novel, please visit the Love in Mid Air Web site and/or join the novel's Facebook fan page.

An Interview with Memoirist Melissa Hart

Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood: An Interview with Melissa Hart

Interview by Erika Dreifus

Melissa Hart is the author, most recently, of the memoir Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood (Seal, 2009). She teaches journalism at the University of Oregon and memoir writing for U.C. Berkeley's online extension program. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Advocate, High Country News, Orion, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Writer's Digest. She lives in Oregon with her husband, their young daughter, and too many cats and dogs.

Melissa is ALSO, like yours truly, a contributing editor for The Writer magazine. (I always enjoy her "Literary Spotlight" columns profiling individual literary journals.) I am thrilled to present this Q&A with Melissa here.

Please welcome Melissa Hart.

Erika Dreifus (ED): Melissa, Gringa is your second memoir. Can you please describe the connections between the two books, as well as what motivated you to write Gringa specifically?

Melissa Hart (MH): I wrote my first memoir, The Assault of Laughter (Windstorm, 2005) as my Master of Fine Arts thesis at Goddard College. Inspired by teachers Jacqueline Woodson and Mariana Romo-Carmona, I wanted to tell the story of the first year in my life after my mother came out as a lesbian and lost custody of me and my two younger siblings. This was 1979; throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, women who came out routinely lost custody of their children to homophobic court systems. I thought it was critical that my story, as representative of many, come to light.

But . . . I was a young writer, and I felt that I could tell the story more skillfully a decade later. I wanted to explore the idea of growing up Anglo, heterosexual, and seemingly devoid of identity in multicultural Los Angeles with a lesbian mom, a brother with Down syndrome, and a deep desire to be a Latina. I expanded the year in Assault to include all the years of my adolescence, from the day my mother left my father to my post-college graduation trip with her to Spain. I'm indebted to Seal's senior editor Brooke Warner for helping me to shape the memoir as a coming-of-age story and a history of my mother's and my relationship, which prevailed in spite of homophobia on the part of both the legal system and my father.

ED: Both of your memoirs reveal a great deal about your family members. How have they reacted to your writing about and publishing your collective stories? How have their reactions affected your writing processes?

MH: My father and I have been estranged for almost two decades. My stepmother and I e-mail occasionally, and she felt that Assault, in particular, gave her insight into our troubled relationship. My mother is a writer, as well, and she's incredibly supportive of my work. She accompanied me on part of the book tour for Gringa. It's worth noting that she asked me not to write about a few elements of our story, and I honored that. My sister is also deeply supportive; she's told all her friends about the book and helped to organize a reading/signing event in her hometown. My brother has Down syndrome, and he doesn't read, but he does enjoy telling and retelling stories about how my sister and I used to dress him up like a girl.

ED: Food plays an important part in Gringa, and each chapter ends with an unconventionally-presented "recipe." How did the idea to include these recipes develop?

MH: I fell in love with recipes in the context of prose stories when I discovered Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate. I loved how her recipes reflected the characters' motivations and relationships. Then I came across Ruth Reichl's books, and then Diana Abu-Jaber's marvelous The Language of Baklava. Both authors incorporate recipes into their memoir, and I had these wonderful goofy recipes such as Frito Boats and my mother's Tortilla Flats which were so important to me as a child. I took so much comfort in food as an adolescent--still do, in fact--and I wanted to offer up some of these recipes to readers as one more way to illustrate key themes and plot points in the book. Food also became a symbol of culture, or lack thereof, when I was an adolescent. I adored my boyfriend's mother's authentic Mexican dishes, for example, and being able to make a savory salsa or a dozen tamales became my benchmark of acceptance into his culture.

ED: What was the biggest challenge you faced in writing Gringa?

MH: The biggest challenge I faced in writing Gringa was not knowing quite what the book wanted to be. Initially, it looked like a series of linked essays that were all over the place in content and theme. My agent at the time, Michelle Andelman, reined me in and noted with great insight that the memoir format might work better as a method of telling the story. In Gringa's next incarnation, I included several chapters between "O Christmas Tree" and "Citizens of the World"--chapters which explored further my problematic relationship with my boyfriend--but my editor felt that they disrupted the coming-of-age trajectory of the story. I cut five chapters and wrote five new ones in a two-month period. I'm a really slow writer, so getting these out and polished on a tight deadline was challenging.

Creating the book trailer for Gringa was also extremely challenging. Last summer, a colleague at the journalism school taught me FinalCut Pro and I became writer, director, food stylist, chef, actress and cat wrangler for this rather goofy trailer.

ED: How did Gringa find its home with Seal Press?

MH: Michelle Andelman shopped the book around to a few publishers, and we felt a particular affinity for Seal and for Brooke, in particular. Seal Press publishes exciting books on unexpected topics related to women, and Brooke enjoyed the humorous social commentary that informs so much of the book. I'm so happy to have worked with Seal; this is a dynamic publishing house with a professional and devoted staff.

ED: What else would you like to tell us?

MH: I teach a memoir writing course for U.C. Berkeley's online extension program which is open to all. I post my upcoming workshops pretty regularly on both my website and my Facebook fan page. I love teaching and working with other writers; I come away inspired and excited to sit down at my computer.

Thank you so much, Melissa!

A version of this interview appeared in the March 2010 issue of The Practicing Writer.

From My Bookshelf: Recent Reads

It seems as though it has been quite some time since I've written up a "From My Bookshelf" post. So let me fill you in on some of my notable recent reads, leaving aside titles I've been reading for review assignments and feel that I should not disclose prior to the reviews being completed/published (how do other reviewers approach this, btw?).

LIT: Many months ago, I attended a reading at Hunter College featuring Mary Karr. Karr is a writer I've admired for a long time, but I'd never had the chance to see/hear her read in person. WOW. What an amazing presence. That evening, she read from her then-forthcoming third memoir, Lit. I knew right away that I'd want to read Lit as soon as it came out. It took me a little while, but I did get to read it last month. It was terrific, especially for someone with varying levels of degrees of familiarity with the "scenes" of low-residency MFA study, Cambridge/Boston, and literary awards. Intrigued? Check out Francine Prose's reliably smart take on Lit here.

THE HELP: Remember last week's link to Michael Copperman's Luna Park post on "authenticity"? Particularly if such questions interest you, you'll want to take a look at Kathryn Stockett's novel, The Help. Chances are, even if you haven't read it, you've heard about it. Here's a snippet from a November 2009 Motoko Rich/New York Times article to refresh your memory:

'The Help,' a novel about the relationships between African-American maids and their white employers in 1960s Mississippi, has the classic elements of a crowd pleaser: it features several feisty women enmeshed in a page-turning plot, clear villains and a bit of a history lesson.

The book, a debut novel by Kathryn Stockett, also comes with a back story that is a publishing dream come true: at first rejected by nearly 50 agents, the manuscript was scooped up by an imprint of Penguin and pushed aggressively to booksellers, who fell in love with it. Since it came out in February, 'The Help' has been embraced by book clubs and bloggers who can’t stop recommending it to their friends.

By the way, The Help, too, features writing and publishing within its narrative. Very much so. Which surely contributed to my engagement with it.

GRINGA: A third book I've had the pleasure to read lately is Melissa Hart's memoir, Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood. Although Hart and I have never met, we're both contributing editors for The Writer magazine, and I'd seen Gringa mentioned in her bio notes. I'm delighted to have had the opportunity to read her new book, which she'll be talking about in an interview featured in the March issue of The Practicing Writer. I don't want to say too much about Hart or her book quite yet, but you can of course learn more on your own.

And what am I reading right now? Currently, I'm a little more than 100 pages into Chris Bohjalian's Skeletons at the Feast, a novel which will be the focus of the next Jewish Book Council Twitter Book Club "Twunch and Talk" on February 25. Perhaps you'll join me there?

The Theory of Light and Matter: An Interview with Andrew Porter

A version of this interview also appears in the January 2010 issue of The Practicing Writer.

The Theory of Light and Matter: An Interview with Andrew Porter
by Erika Dreifus

Andrew Porter is the author of the short story collection, The Theory of Light and Matter, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and has just been republished in paperback by Vintage/Knopf. His fiction has appeared in One Story, Epoch, The Pushcart Prize Anthology and on NPR's "Selected Shorts." He currently teaches creative writing at Trinity University in San Antonio. Recently, Andrew responded to a series of questions about his work.

ERIKA DREIFUS (ED): Andrew, the Vintage Contemporaries (Knopf) release of The Theory of Light and Matter signals a reincarnation of sorts, given that the book was originally published by the University of Georgia Press as a winning manuscript within the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction series. Please tell us the story of how the collection has come to be republished and describe any changes that may have been made to the manuscript for the newer version.

ANDREW PORTER (AP): Well, the Vintage/Knopf deal happened fairly quickly, and I was very fortunate it happened at all. At the time, my collection had been out in hardcover for about four months, and because it had done well in terms of sales and reviews, the University of Georgia Press had offered to publish a paperback edition the following fall. Around the same time, I was approached by my current agent, Terra Chalberg, who expressed an interest in trying to sell the paperback rights to a larger house. The University of Georgia Press was open to this idea, but said that they could only give Terra about two weeks to do this, as they were currently making the final decisions for their fall catalogue. I knew that the odds were against us, but I also figured that there was nothing to lose, so I gave Terra the thumbs up and two weeks later she had managed to attract several offers, all of which included the publication of my novel-in-progress as well.

Anyway, I've been around the writing world long enough to know that this type of thing doesn't happen very often, and I still feel extremely grateful to Terra for making it happen. As for changes, I only made a few small ones, and they're probably so minor that I doubt anyone would even notice.

ED: All 10 stories in The Theory of Light and Matter are told by a first-person narrator. You're probably asked about this a lot, but could you address your obvious affinity for the first-person point of view? What do you find so appealing and effective about it?

AP: I like a lot of things about the first person. I like the intimacy of it, for one, and also the idea of assuming a persona, but probably my favorite thing about the first person is the fact that it's an inherently unreliable point of view. This might seem like a disadvantage to some, but I think that the unreliability of it- the fact that every narrator is telling his or her story through a somewhat biased lens-can actually be a great source of complexity and tension.

ED: What do you consider the biggest challenge of the first-person p.o.v., and how do you, as a writer, negotiate it?

AP: For me, the hardest part of working in the first person is dealing with the obvious limitations and constraints of telling a story through just one lens. When I'm working on a short story, this isn't such a problem, but when I'm working on something longer, like a novel, it becomes increasingly difficult to deal with the constraints and limitations of a single perspective. For example, I'm working on a novel right now, and though I'd initially planned to write this novel in the first person, I soon realized that it was simply too large a story to tell through just one character's perspective, and so I switched over to the third-person omniscient and this has really freed me up.

ED: Although I found all the stories distinctive--in U.S. regional setting, in variations between male and female narrators, etc.--there is one story that seems sharply different from the rest. I'm thinking of "Skin," which, at less than two pages, is by far the shortest story in the collection. But it's not simply this story's length that seems atypical. The accompanying compression seems combined with a shift in tone that I can't quite articulate. I'm curious not only about the inclusion of this short-short story, but also about its placement in the sequence as the penultimate piece.

AP: Well, the stories in this collection are largely about memory and the way we reconstruct memory, and so even though "Skin" is by far the shortest story in the collection, I think I liked the fact that it approached this theme of reconstructing memory in a slightly different way. Not only is it much shorter than the others, but it also uses a very different style of narration, beginning as it does in the present tense, then shifting to the future tense, then ending again in the present, all the while reminding the reader that the events of the story have taken place in the past. This isn't something I really do in any other story in the collection, and so I think that's one of the reasons I decided to include it. As for why I decided to make it the penultimate story, that's a good question. I think I was pretty firmly committed to the order of the first eight stories, and since I knew that I didn't want to end with it, well, there was really only one place left for me to put it.

ED: You've mentioned your novel-in-progress. Can you describe that project at all (and tell us when we can expect it to be available)?

AP: I tend to be pretty superstitious when it comes to talking about works-in-progress, but I can tell you that the novel is set in Houston and that it involves a family going through a crisis. I hope to finish the novel at some point in the next year, and so I guess it might be available as soon as 2012.

ED: Is there anything else you'd like to tell us?

AP: I'll be doing a number of readings in New York, California, and Texas over the next few months. All of the details about these reading can be found at my website: www.andrewporterwriter.com.

Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me, Erika. This has been a lot of fun!

ED: Thanks so much, Andrew!

End-of-Year Reading Recommendations from and for Practicing Writers

End-of-Year Reading Recommendations from and for Practicing Writers

Compiled by Erika Dreifus

Remember last year's December feature? I introduced it by explaining that throughout 2008, my writing life had intersected with the work of other practicing writers in many ways. I'd profiled writers, reviewed their books, and/or simply mentioned their efforts in this newsletter or on my blog(s). The same is happily true for 2009, so I thought I'd approach members of my own "class of 2009" with a similar request.

I invited these writers to participate in an end-of-year roundup article in which they might cite ONE book they'd read this year that they'd recommend to other writers and explain why they thought writers, especially, would enjoy it. I told the participants that they could spotlight any type of book - fiction, nonfiction, poetry, writing reference, etc. Anything. My only condition was this: They could not recommend their own books. I'm gratified and inspired by the responses my invitations yielded, and I thank these authors once again for sharing their time and thoughts with us.


The most valuable writing book I've read this year is Christina Katz's Get Known Before the Book Deal: Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform. It explains what a platform is, why you (yes, YOU) need one, and offers a friendly and comprehensive guide to creating and growing a platform over time. I have Katz to thank for inspiring my own platform, and for the two book deals that it has yielded so far.

--Sage Cohen

=======

I read with great interest Bob Shacochis's The Immaculate Invasion (originally Viking, now Diane Pub. Co.) when I was sick in bed with the flu. Shacochis has written here what I admiringly call a big crazy book: in this case, a closely detailed and sometimes shambling, but always riveting, account of the "soft" invasion of Haiti by the US in 1994. What becomes clear, through the lens of Shacochis's experience while imbedded with the US Special Forces, is how the US government's desire to do "good" often backfires, sometimes for cynical reasons, but perhaps just as often because there's no good or even sane way out of a situation. Highly applicable to our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.

--John Griswold

=======

My offering is Marianne Wiggins's The Shadow Catcher (Simon & Schuster, 2007). I read it for the first time early this year, and can't stop recommending this stunning novel about the life of photographer Edward Curtis, in which Wiggins juxtaposes a character named Marianne Wiggins with the somewhat-imagined life of Curtis, placing her characters and their trajectories in the present day and in the past, using a dazzling craft mix of fiction, nonfiction, and screenplay structures.

--Jessica Handler

=======

It's a bit funny, I guess, that of everything I've read this year, the book that comes to mind to recommend is John Updike's Rabbit Is Rich(Knopf, 1981). Since I specialize in American Jewish literature, Updike generally isn't too high on my priority list, but I'm so glad every time I get a chance to read one of his better novels. He's a master of realism, of its techniques and possibilities, and somehow he makes his subjects matter to me in a way I wish more contemporary writers could emulate.

--Joshua Lambert

=======

One of my favorite reads this year was Natalie Goldberg's new book, An Old Friend from Far Away (Free Press, 2009). Though I'm primarily a fiction writer myself, I loved Goldberg's writing prompts, as well as her constant reminders that we all have more to say than we'll ever know. Some chapters are a sentence long (but you won't turn the page without writing), and other, longer ones examine an aspect of writing or an author's style, from Zora Neale Hurston to Chang-Rae Lee. From such weighty topics as love and fear to the more ordinary, such as peaches and dishes, Goldberg's exhortations ("Ten minutes. Go.") will inspire -- and best of all, they'll get you writing.

--Midge Raymond

(c) 2009 Erika Dreifus. This article originally appeared in the December 2009 issue of The Practicing Writer.

From My Bookshelf: German for Travelers: A Novel in 95 Lessons, by Norah Labiner

Last week, the fall issue of Jewish Book World arrived in my mailbox, and I was delighted to see that it included my first review for that publication. Jewish Book World packs in a LOT of reviews each quarter, so most of the pieces are relatively short. Here's my take, in its entirety, on Norah Labiner's German for Travelers: A Novel in 95 Lessons (Coffee House Press, 2009):

In ninety-five brief chapters, this novel acquaints us with an extended family and its secrets, past and present. In 2005, a letter from a woman claiming to be their great-aunt prompts Jewish-American cousins Eliza Berlin and Louisa 'Lemon' Leopold to travel to Germany. There, at the beginning of the previous centruy, their great-grandfather, Dr. Jozef Apfel, was a prominent psychoanalyst. The novel reveals secrets and traumas within the lives of the cousins as well as the truth behind their great-grandfather's most mysterious case, that of 'Elsa Z.' At various times, the reader will notice what seems to be the sparest of expository prose (the body of one chapter consists of a single twelve-word sentence); occasionally, there is a page-length paragraph; some sections particularly impress with their use of dialogue or detail. Although some readers may initially find it difficult to track all the characters, overall, the novel is extremely engaging, shifting in time and place with artful connections and literary grace. Chronology [included].

Friday Find: My Latest Online Review

For your weekend reading pleasure: my review of Book of Clouds, a novel by Chloe Aridjis, published on the wonderful Fiction Writers Review site. Enjoy it!

And have a great weekend. (Monday is a holiday here in the U.S.A., but I'll be posting nonetheless, so I'll see you back here then.)

From My Bookshelf: Bookkeeping Basics for Freelance Writers

Whether you are just launching a freelance writing business or you want to make sure your established business is operating correctly, you are likely to appreciate Brigitte Thompson's handy and well-organized Bookkeeping Basics for Freelance Writers. I'm certainly going to be keeping my review copy within reach for reminders and resources (my thanks to the author for sending me the copy). You can learn more about Brigitte Thompson and her book here.

From My Bookshelf: Vacation Reads

Well, I managed to read all four books I had with me on vacation. I won't mention one of them, because I really did not enjoy it, and I think it has already received more publicity than it merits, but the other three are well worth your attention:

--Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It is Maile Meloy's latest story collection. Sad, creepy, and oh-so-smoothly-crafted. The story "The Girlfriend" is still haunting me.

--Fearless Confessions: A Writer's Guide to Memoir. Stay tuned for an interview here on the blog with this book's super-smart author, Sue William Silverman.

--Unnamed novel. I think it's generally bad form to publicize the titles of books you have under review before the actual review appears. So you'll have to wait a little while to hear about this one. But you WILL hear about it (my editor is expecting the review on Saturday, which is going to be a bit of a challenge, but I'm up for it!). Sorry for the delay.

What have you all been reading lately?

Follow-up on The Atlantic's Latest Fiction Issue

Just wanted to follow-up on my earlier mention of The Atlantic's latest fiction issue and point you to some of the work I most enjoyed and am still thinking about. You can access each piece here.

--"The Laugh," a story by Téa Obreht (see also the interview with Obreht)
--"Furlough," a story by Alexi Zentner (see also the interview with Zentner)
--"Eyes on the Prize," an essay by Alice Sebold adapted from The Best American Short Stories 2009.

Have you had a chance to read the issue yet? What impressed you? Please share, in comments (but do recall that I will be on the Internet only intermittently this week and therefore it may take some time for your moderated comment to appear).

From My Bookshelf: Mothers In All But Name, Edited by Marguerite Guzman Bouvard

You may remember that I have some strong feelings on the subject of writing about motherhood, and some very strong feelings on the specific topic of writing about motherhood as a writer who is not a mother.

So it may not surprise you that I was intrigued when I read Wordamour's description of a new anthology "about all the different forms mothering can take." Edited by Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, it's called Mothers In All But Name, and, as its subtitle suggests, it features contributions from "grandmothers, aunts, sisters, friends, strangers, and nannies." In fact, I was intrigued enough to order a copy, and to read it this past weekend.

There are a lot of personal/familial reasons this subject matter resonates with me (and I'd love to have an anthology assignment to prompt me to write an essay of my own about [one or more of] them). But as a writer, and as a writer who has already been pretty outspoken about the feasibility of non-mothers writing fiction "about" motherhood, I have to admit that these lines resonated with me instantly:

In the ten years between [a job as a nanny for a child with special needs] and bearing my own children, I carry my other motherhood like a phantom limb. In graduate school, I occasionally write stories that celebrate the bonds of parents and children, stories that are generally well received, some even published in literary magazines. One chain-smoking visiting writer, however, eying my twenty four year old countenance (undoubtedly undercut by a relentlessly baby face) insists that I write what I know.

'What,' she asks, waving my manuscript about a father who fears his daughter might be abducted 'Do you know about being a parent?'

Mothers In All But Name is definitely not the showiest, most polished, or glossiest "mama" anthology you're likely to find, but it's certainly a worthwhile addition to the literature on motherhood.

From My Bookshelf: Recent Reads

I'm pleased to report that my most recent reading includes books from each genre I try to deal with on this blog (and incorporate into my own writing practice): fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

As far as fiction goes, I am currently about halfway through John Updike's last story collection, My Father's Tears. I've been happy to discover stories "new" to me (like the one that opens the book, "Morocco") and I've been equally pleased to revisit ones that caught my attention back when they appeared in The Atlantic ("Varieties of Religious Experience") or The New Yorker ("Delicate Wives").

And I'm still thinking about Jessica Handler's memoir, Invisible Sisters, which I finished several days ago. It's a very sad book (the publisher's Web site sums it up as "a compelling, lyrical memoir of a girl who must navigate the loss of her two sisters before she can discover herself").

Finally, I'm making my way through The Book of Questions, by Pablo Neruda (translated by William O'Daly), and published in a wonderful bilingual edition by Copper Canyon Press, which I was lucky enough to receive as a recent gift. I am enjoying this slim volume so much. And while I'm trying to extract some poetry-writing lessons from it, I can't help being caught up in all the vivid phrases with another thought. And that is--wouldn't this make a great title? Or, at the very least, a prompt? Examples: "Imprisoned in One of Petrarch's Sonnets," "The Pale Tears of the Sky," or "The Hospital Garden."

What are you reading right now?

Friday Find: New Review of Forgetting English, by Midge Raymond

Longtime Practicing Writing readers know how much I admire Fiction Writers Review. At long last, I am delighted to announce that this practicing writer is now an official contributor to that terrific online publication!

Please read my review of Midge Raymond's prizewinning story collection, Forgetting English. (It turns out that Raymond's book happens to be a June selection from Andrew's Book Club, too--how nice is that?)

Enjoy, and have a wonderful weekend!

From My Bookshelf: The Confessions of Noa Weber, by Gail Hareven (translated by Dalya Bilu)

From the back cover of Gail Hareven's new novel (translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu), The Confessions of Noa Weber: "This award-winning novel of one woman's quest to understand her obsessive love for a mysterious man is by turns funny, self-mocking, and brutally honest."

Well, this reader couldn't resist that description, especially when it was complemented by this enthusiastic NPR review and book excerpt (but shame, again, on NPR for not crediting the translator, to whom I also owe my first encounters with such excellent Israeli writers as Aharon Appelfeld and Orly Castel-Bloom). Bonus: I have a recurrent weakness for novels and stories about writers. Noa Weber, the eponymous protagonist, is a writer (and a successful one!).

It happens, as we all know, that book jacket descriptions don't always deliver on their promises. This one does--sort of.

That is to say, the book is, indeed "by turns funny, self-mocking, and brutally honest." But I can't say I think that the first-person narrator--that self-same Noa Weber--is all that interested in understanding her obsessive love for the itinerant, Soviet-born Alek, the father of her child, a man for whom, despite a nominal marriage, Noa is, in truth, more of a mistress than a wife. Talking about it with the reader (note, not with a psychotherapist), yes. Understanding it, I'm not so convinced.

Because, despite the occasional (rhetorical) question, Noa seems remarkably self-aware. She seems to understand and accept the situation.

Further, as a writer, she knows what is an interesting story, and what is not:

For the record I'll simply mention here that I was favored by the luck of the draw. I grew up well fed and protected, and that's another reason why where and how I "came into the world" is not a matter of public interest. People who've survived a holocaust, who were born into a world that no longer exists, they can begin their biographies with "I was born," my heroic father can begin his story with "I am born." Not me. My early history is too boring, it fails to provide any explanation for what happened to me in later years, and I have never felt the urge to examine it or whine about it. Nor do I now.

In any case, it's no great loss, and if the right to say "I was born" has to be paid for in dire catastrophes, stepfathers, orphanages, and picking pockets in the marketplace, I say , "No thanks," and choose to enter this story at the age of seventeen, where the real me begins:

Me and my love for Alek--which against my better judgment I experience as transcendence.

In this case, I'm not sure the lack of an explicit, sustained quest for understanding (if I'm right) is such a flaw. The book works so very well without it.

Especially for this American reader, who considers herself woefully under-read in Israeli literature, who appreciated the book's Israeli setting and context, who is grateful to be able to read the work of a writer who has won the prestigious Sapir Prize, and who, quite simply, looked forward to reading the next chapters for all the recent evenings the book has rested on her bedside table.


Further resources:

--Gail Hareven's profile on the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature Web site.

--An interview with Gail Hareven in The Forward.

--The Complete Review's review of The Confessions of Noa Weber. Much more articulate than anything I've attempted to write here. Really captures the book.

(cross-posted on My Machberet)

The Wednesday Web Browser: Recommended Parenting-Related Writing

It's not exactly a secret around here that although I don't have children of my own, I'm quite interested in parent-child relationships and the infinite stories emanating from them. Today, I thought I'd point out some exemplary parenting-related writing.

First up: Recently, I reconnected with a friend who is now a mom to twin toddlers (and two wonderful older stepchildren). I was quick to recommend Jane Roper's excellent "Baby Squared" blog on Babble.com. I'm not exactly sure when I discovered this blog, but Jane, whose name I remembered from the Boston writing scene, instantly pulled me in with her smart, funny writing about life with her twin girls.
==========
Next: "Kelly James-Enger" is another name I've known for a long time, mainly from many years' worth of Writer magazine articles. The other day, I read Kelly's beautiful essay, "When Words Really Matter." It's an eloquent reminder that sometimes, our most significant writings won't earn us a penny of income. But they're infinitely more valuable than anything that might bring in a paycheck.
==========
Finally, Gene Weingarten's Washington Post article, "Fatal Distraction," is currently making the Internet rounds. This extended article is notable for its powerful writing (as well as its tragic subject matter). Warning: You may not be able to get through it. (For the record, I first found this article via Lisa Belkin's Motherlode blog at NYTimes.com.)

Any of you want to recommend similar/related writings or writers? Please do so, in comments!

Bolaño's Bio-Bibliographical Dictionary: A Review of Nazi Literature in the Americas

Although I haven't yet seen a copy of the latest (Fall 2008) issue of The Chattahoochee Review, I'm told by a reliable reader that my review of Nazi Literature in the Americas indeed appears there. I'm pleased to share the review with all of you as well.

Bolaño's Bio-Bibliographical Dictionary

Nazi Literature in the Americas. Roberto Bolaño. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. New Directions, 2008. 280 pp. $23.95

Review by Erika Dreifus

One of the first assignments I received as a freelance writer back in 1994 was a series of profiles intended for publication in a reference text titled Dictionary of Hispanic Biography. Not once in the course of researching, writing, and, later, proofreading entries — including a considerable number of entries focusing on writers — did I encounter the name “Roberto Bolaño.” Published by a highly reputable reference text company, the dictionary failed to account for this particular author, moving swiftly from Adolfo Bioy Casares (whose profile I was in fact assigned to write) to Jorge Luis Borges.

Today, five years after Bolaño’s death at the age of 50, it would be unthinkable to omit his name from any serious discussion of Spanish-language, or, for that matter, world literature. For those who cannot read Spanish (myself among them, I must confess), the Chilean-born Bolaño’s work is becoming increasingly available in English translation. I’ve lost count of the reviews that focused on The Savage Detectives (translated by Natasha Wimmer and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007); at this writing, the blogosphere is already filling with anticipatory posts from readers awaiting 2666, also translated by Wimmer and scheduled for a fall 2008 FSG release.

Sandwiched and, I fear, somewhat lost between these two blockbuster titles is Nazi Literature in the Americas, the fifth translation, to date, of Bolaño’s oeuvre from New Directions (Australian Chris Andrews, who translated this book, also brought us the first four). It’s a work of fiction that doesn’t quite read like one. Rather, it’s constructed like a work of history: a reference work. Which is not to say that those who love fiction — not to mention those who write it — won’t be drawn in.

Nazi Literature in the Americas is an imaginative and, despite its apparent straightforwardness and simplicity, an intricate creation. Let’s begin with the characters at the heart of the profiles. The book’s title notwithstanding, these fictional men and women don’t all belong to the era of the Third Reich (although it’s true that “Luz Mendiluce,” we read, throughout her life “treasured the famous photo of herself in Hitler’s arms”); some, in fact, belong to the future, with death dates cited as far into the future as 2029. The narrator/biographer also alludes repeatedly to a “Fourth Reich” with which he associates several of his biographical subjects.

Thirty central characters emerge here, with half of them hailing from either Argentina or the United States. They write prose and poetry; they travel. Their lives are chronicled, for the most part, in just a few profile-format pages, and they are grouped into categories ranging from “Poètes Maudits” and “Wandering Women of Letters” to “Speculative and Science Fiction” and “Magicians, Mercernaries and Miserable Creatures.” After the 30 profiles, Bolaño appends a list of “secondary figures,” collecting the names of still more invented figures, individuals whom the reader may or may not remember from their appearances in the chronicles of the lives of others. For example, “Luz Mendiluce” receives a full profile; “Susy D’Amato”’s name appears within it, and D’Amato therefore merits a brief identification at the end: “Susy D’Amato. Buenos Aires, 1935-Paris, 2001. Argentinean poet and friend of Luz Mendiluce. She ended her days selling Latin American handicrafts in the French capital.” The inventions continue with a list of all the fictional publishing houses, magazines, and assorted places that have similarly emerged throughout this “history,” plus a bibliography of works by Luz Mendiluce and the 29 other primary “Nazi” writers in the Americas.

Sound complicated? Bolaño mixes it up even further by having his fictional writers interact not only among themselves, but also with “real” writers. For instance, “Juan Mendiluce Thompson” (born in Buenos Aires in 1920, we are told, and died in that city in 1991)

became known as the Argentinean Cato. He fought with his sister, Luz Mendiluce, over control of the family magazine. Having won the fight, he tried to lead a crusade against the lack of feeling in the contemporary novel. To coincide with the publication of his third novel, Springtime in Madrid, he launched a campaign against francophilia, the cult of violence, atheism, and foreign ideas. American Letters and Modern Argentina served as platforms, along with the various Buenos Aires dailies, which were keen to publish, although sometimes flabbergasted by, his denunciations of Cortázar, whom he described as unreal and bloodthirsty, and Borges, whose stories, so he claimed, were “parodies of parodies” and whose lifeless characters were derived from worn-out traditions of English and French literature, clearly in decline, “repeating the same old plots ad nauseam.” His attacks took in Bioy Casares, Mujica Lainez, Ernesto Sabato (who, in his eyes, personified the cult of violence and gratuitious aggression), Leopoldo Marechal, and others.

Elsewhere, we learn about American Jim O’Bannon, a “poet and football player” who “remained firm in his disdain for Jews and homosexuals to the end, although at the time of this death he was beginning, gradually, to accept African Americans,” and his rather complicated connection to Allen Ginsberg. Well-read readers can’t help being lured in.

A conventional novel or collection of short fiction, Nazi Literature in the Americas is not. But it’s undeniably an extremely intriguing exercise in literary imagination. And for some readers, who may also delight in reading about literary life in all its potentially inglorious, which is to say human, aspects, it may well offer a most enjoyable read.


This review was published in the Fall 2008 issue of The Chattachoochee Review.

From My Bookshelf: How to Write Like Chekhov

LEARNING FROM A MASTER WRITER

How to Write Like Chekhov: Advice and Inspiration, Straight from His Own Letters and Work, edited and introduced by Piero Brunello and Lena Lencek and translated from the Russian and Italian by Lena Lencek. Da Capo Press, 256 pages. Paperback, $14.95

Review by Erika Dreifus

Born in 1860, Anton Chekhov is remembered today as a masterful playwright and short story writer. His work is widely anthologized, and he has inspired countless literary descendants. Fortunately for us, Chekhov, who lived only 44 years, also left a legacy of correspondence in which he offered advice that applies not only to the writers and editors of his own time, but also to those living in ours.

In this book, Piero Brunello and Lena Lencek have done something others have tried before them: mined Chekhov's correspondence for advice on the craft of writing. What's new and particularly noteworthy in this volume is a focus on lessons to be learned from a close reading of The Island of Sakhalin, a work of nonfiction reportage that emerged from the doctor-writer's travels to a Russian penal colony.

How to Write Like Chekhov comprises two parts. Part one ("Theory") includes Chekhov's explicit advice on writing as directed to his correspondents, including other writers seeking his take on their work. In a Jan. 3, 1899, letter to Maxim Gorky, for example, Chekhov advocated simplicity in descriptions of nature:

Your nature descriptions are artistic; you are a true landscape painter. However, your frequent comparisons to humans (anthropomorphism)--the sea breathes, the sky looks on, the steppe basks in the sun, nature whispers, speaks, weeps, and so on--these kinds of personifications make your descriptions somewhat monotonous, a touch saccharine, vague; in descriptions of nature, vibrancy and expressivity are best produced by simple techniques, for example: using simple phrases such as "the sun set," "it got dark," "it started to rain," and so on.

Again, others have cited such Chekhovian words of wisdom before (and it may be worth considering that parts one and two were published separately in the original Italian version edited by Brunello).

Part two ("Demonstration") is where this book offers its most significant contribution. Subdivided into three subsections--"The Project," "The Report," and "Actual Writing"--"Demonstration" suggests how to construct a work of investigative nonfiction by examining how Chekhov assembled The Island of Sakhalin. As Brunello explains in his introduction, this part of the book "is especially addressed to writers who, like Chekhov, are interested in discovering, exploring, and understanding the unknown. The modus operandi of his voyage of discovery is useful not only to writers who make long journeys and wish to write about them but also to those who want to understand life closer to home."

Chekhov's pre-journey correspondence reveals, for example, that before embarking on his trip he conducted considerable research and wrote up material that did not require field research. Excerpts from these letters lead Brunello to suggest steps other nonfiction writers might follow, including "read and summarize" and "write up the notes."

Matters become increasingly interesting when we read letters Chekhov sent while traveling to and through Sakhalin and text that appears to be drawn from his actual report. Brunello evidently believes that if we attend closely to how Chekhov conducted his field research, we'll glean some useful tips on how to pursue similar work.

So Chekhov's description of a local wedding moves Brunello to suggest the usefulness of attending a similar event and observing "what people are wearing, their ages, rituals, conversations, and social roles." And a Chekhovian paragraph about messages scratched into benches prompts Brunello to highlight how instructive studying graffiti may be. Other tips attached to relevant excerpts from Chekhov's Sakhalin work include "save receipts, schedules, and fliers," "study the climate," "take a census" and quantify."

The Sakhalin material also provides advice on the actual writing process, encompassing both logistics and craft. In one letter, for instance, Chekhov tells a correspondent that delaying his post-journey writing on Sakhalin "would be dangerous because my impressions of Sakhalin are already evaporating, and I risk forgetting a lot"; from this, Brunello highlights the importance of writing "while your impressions are still fresh." And with a wrenching excerpt in which Chekhov describes witnessing a prisoner's flogging, Brunello points to the importance of the writer sharing his own emotions in the narrative.

It's difficult to predict the degree to which any reader will finish this book and be able to "write like Chekhov." But it's equally challenging to think of a nobler goal.

© Copyright 2009 Erika Dreifus

(A version of this review appeared in The Writer magazine.)

Quotable Quotes from The Journal of Jules Renard

The first in a new "Lost and Found" series from Tin House Books, The Journal of Jules Renard holds a number of lines bound to resonate with practicing writers. They're not always cheerful (to say the least!), but they are there. I've chosen some to share with you.

Renard lived from 1864 to 1910. This edition was edited and translated by Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget.

And here's some of what Renard had to say about writing:

"To write in the manner that Rodin sculpts."

"The critic is a botanist. I am a gardener."

"Yes, I know. All great men were unknown at first. But I am not a great man, and I should be just as pleased to be known now."

"If the word arse appears in a sentence, even in a sublime sentence, the public will hear only that one word."

"I have not renounced ambition. The fire still burns in me--a banked fire, but alive."

"Writing. The most difficult part is to take hold of the pen, dip it in the ink, and hold it firm over the paper."

"This is a notebook of abortions."

"The arm I want to extend toward my manuscript seems to be paralyzed."

From My Bookshelf: November 22, 1963

According to the Historical Novel Society, "To be deemed historical...a novel must have been written at least fifty years after the events described, or have been written by someone who was not alive at the time of those events (who therefore approaches them only by research)." Author Adam Braver may have been alive when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated: Braver was born in 1963. But he obviously does not remember the event, and he has approached it through a fascinating combination of research and fiction-crafting in his new novel, November 22, 1963 (Tin House Books).

I thought I knew a lot about the assassination, which is an historical event for me, too (my parents were still a few months away from meeting each other on November 22, 1963). But Braver's book, which focuses in depth on the events of that day through the closely-drawn third-person eyes of everyone from a Dallas policeman to Abe Zapruder to Maud Shaw (Caroline and John-John's nanny) to, of course, Jackie Kennedy, opened up so much more.

Most of us will never know what it was to be Air Force One as it bore the slain President's coffin back to Washington; Braver has imagined that. Most of us didn't witness the autopsy at Walter Reed; Braver has evoked it. Most of us can't imagine how Maud Shaw told six-year-old Caroline what had happened (I hadn't even realized that Jackie Kennedy had given the nanny that awful task); Braver shows us how it might have happened.

They were the only two in the room, but...Miss Shaw could barely look at Caroline, tucked firmly in bed under the canopy of rosebud chintz, forcing a confident expression, though it was clear she knew something wasn't right; and Miss Shaw's eyes were tearing while Caroline stared at her, almost demanding an explanation other than Miss Shaw taking her hand and apologizing for the tears; and Miss Shaw knew she could wait until morning (Mrs. Auchincloss told her Mrs. Kennedy said it was up to her to gauge what the children did or didn't know), but she looked at Caroline and something told her it wouldn't be fair to send the girl to sleep, to let her wake up full of promise—better for the girl to wake up as part of the grief, and that way maybe she'll mourn more purely; then Miss Shaw inhaled so deeply her gut almost burst, and on the exhalation she said that there had been an accident; then she paused, realizing the sound of hope in the word accident, and corrected herself to say, 'He's been shot, and God has taken him to Heaven because they couldn't make him better in the hospital,' and then closed her eyes, praying that when she opened them she wouldn't see Caroline crying—that this had all been a dream.

This is historical fiction at its best: intensely researched (check out Braver's staggering list of acknowledgments, including the Oral History collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum [Maud Shaw's is among the transcripts Braver tells us he accessed]) and beautifully written. I recommend it highly.