Happenstance

I’ve made significant progress on literary scholar Robert Root’s memoir Happenstance (University of Iowa Press: 2013). The book has grown on me, a bit slow paced but consistant in its contents and style. I am reviewing the book for the online magazine Hippocampus. My deadline approaches (January 20). 

With a past as a journalist, I put way too much effort and thought into reviewing books. I want to be fair, and honest, but it’s a lot of effort to write a book and when I don’t love the book… I don’t want to say anything that would hurt the author or publisher. I guess that’s a professional responsibility. Whatever I say reflects on me, and I want to find the strengths on any manuscript and look at what the book offers for the intended audience. For example, the biography of Jimi Hendrix I reviewed obviously was never targeted at someone like me for its demographic. 

I think that’s also the way I’ve tried to look at the world. What is the good in this situation? Who benefits? Why am I uncomfortable? 

But back to Happenstance… I’m three-quarters of the way through the text. I’ve noticed a pattern, or more maybe a theme. Root is looking at his childhood through relationships— primarily marriage and divorce— and I believe he is searching for how these marriages and divorces molded his life and influenced his own relationships.

Of course, it looks ridiculous to write that. Of course a memoir would develop in this way! Let me refine. The relationships… Mom and Dad and their divorce and subsequent remarriage… remain the characters that Root returns to again and again. There are isolated instances of topics that don’t relate to this theme, his first job as a pin boy or his love of the cinema, but uses the theme of his parents’ relationship(s) to build the story.

The book is more than half finished and he hasn’t reached high school. I am curious to see how and where it ends.

Choices and discussions

After nearly two weeks away from the daily grind, I find myself rediscovering my morning routine. For instance, why do I drink so much tea on days that my daughter has school but have no desire for tea when she doesn’t?

Answer: It’s cold out there. By the time I get home from walking the neighborhood kids to school my legs burn with cold and my nose runs making tea warm and very delightful. Today it is 32 ounces of Traditional Medicinal Organic Rose Hips. 

The Northeast is anticipating a snow storm. I wouldn’t be surprised if my region gets a foot of snow tonight. Of course, storms being what they are I also wouldn’t be surprised if we get four inches. My neighbor has already informed his son that school will be canceled tomorrow. That’s a tad premature.

So, I have several options for the two hours before I head to work. Not including the obvious. I will need to eat a meal. As I enjoy my tea, I ponder… Do I reply to a recent email from my high school peer JM Cooper who is progressing with her MFA in YA? That is the most compelling option, but the email would require the answers to various “how are you” and “what are you writing?” questions. Not sure I know the proper response.

Do I continue reading Robert Root’s memoir Happenstance? I have a review of it due on January 20 for Hippocampus Magazine. I feel like I should remember this guy from my undergraduate career as an English major. The book has yet to excite or bore me. I’m in the vicinity of page 50. Thus far, he has approached his life as one might expect of a literary scholar. He examines family photos and interprets poems and letters written by family members. This technique leads me to believe he is looking for answers, or perhaps even order, to his life more so than setting out to tell a story.

In my little side foray as a book reviewer, I have discovered that I only enjoy memoirs that have some sort of larger message. Sheridan Vorsey’s Resurrection Year gave insight into the intersecting and conflicting emotions that come when Christians face infertility. Kylie Jones’ Lies My Mother Never Told Me resonated with me because 1. I’m a francophile 2. I’m an English major and her father is a famous novelist and 3. It addresses alcoholism and growing up as a child of an alcoholic (something I share). My all time favorite memoir is by Ted Morgan, a journalist conscripted by the French during the Algerian War. He combines the horror of war, the skills of a journalist and the everyday realities of love and sex. 

The final option for this morning is to work on my new novel. It’s connected to my Fashion and Fiends universe but features new characters. It occurs after my first manuscript in the series and overlaps the second, bridging the time gap to the third. I have chosen the youngest sister of Basilie Saint-Ebène d’Amille as my protagonist. Basilie is a main character in all of my Fashion and Fiends novels. The third manuscript is “her” book. 

But for now I turn to Jacqueline Saint-Ebène. Born in spring of 1968, eleven years after her eldest sister, Jacqueline became a doctor. An Ob/gyn to be exact. While she appreciates the complexity of the female reproductive system, especially as she has seen several of her older sisters struggle with pregnancy and fertility issues, Jacqueline quickly discovers that she doesn’t want to spend the next twenty or so years with her hands inside other women’s vaginas. Out of boredom and perhaps as an act of rebellion, she joined the Army Health Service. After an initial tour in Djibouti, she re-enlists for eight years. My story picks up with her when she’s serving a deployment in/near Algeria during the Algerian Civil War. She mysteriously receives transfer orders to Paris, where she will examine a pregnant veteran who served in the health corps in 1978. The orders seem strange and yet logical when her boyfriend, a health corps psychiatrist, joins the team and they are asked to investigate other veterans connected to a certain mission in 1978. One of them is Jacqueline’s brother-in-law, Étienne d’Amille. 

Which will I select?

Magic of Books

I'm reading the memoir "The Piano Shop on the Left Bank" by Thad Carhart.

Not only does it transport me to Paris and remind me of the quirky traits of the French, but it successfully captures the essence of the hobbyist musicians and the complexity and personality of pianos. This is one art I have attempted to understand and even with world music and music appreciation classes. I have never bridged that gap.

Some writers slowly build believable worlds with words, worlds that you accept, but some authors can instantly transport you to the protagonist's side as if by magic.

Thank you, Thad, for the magic.

Writing Psychotherapy

My personal life has changed somewhat in the last few weeks with the loss of my job. I have a theory about life, perhaps one trying to circumvent the old superstition that "bad things come in threes." When one bad thing happens, I face every other potential stressor in my life on purpose.

So, since I lost my job and pitched to a literary agent in the same week, let's also get the car inspected and go to the doctor for a physical.

Now I have a $700 car bill, am waiting on test results for anemia, and working with a psychologist to see if I have general anxiety disorder. Just the fact that there is such a thing as "general anxiety disorder" that effects a large segment of the American population amazes me.

Could it be part of the problem is our lack of connection to anything other than our material lives? We all seem stressed out about money, jobs and stuff and I don't get it. Why? I'm a victim of it as much as anyone. But why? If I lost my house would my family really let us go homeless? If I couldn't afford food would my friends and neighbors let my daughter go hungry?

But yet... these fears exist.

(I promise this will get to writing.)

In the 19th century, after the industrial revolution, many writers and visual artists addressed the potential hazards of modernization. Many writers like Zola and Sinclair took the naturalist route and described what they saw in detail and when you read these works, like Zola's experience of the Hausmann-influenced Paris, I feel like we've never dealt with these issues. Not yet. More than 100 years later.

Gauguin's solution was to live, paint and frolic with the natives in tropical paradise.

And I think people today are no more "screwed up" than people 100 years ago. A nervous person 100 years ago might lock herself in the parlor with a book, or work in the garden, or get sent to the sanatorium for a "rest," but would more of us be more at ease if we had a more natural rhythm of work and rest?

150 years ago everyone had some connections to the land. If they didn't grow their own food, their neighbors grew it. They understood the limits of their universe and had a connection to ever part of their lives. We're detached. Our food comes from grocery stores. Our fuel comes in tanker trucks. Our clothes come from malls. We hit switches and lights come on. We type words on screens and send them to other people with the touch of a button.

Our ancestors understood their needs and how to fulfill them. Our ancestors worked and slept on schedule with the sun and didn't have a snooze alarm.

I've connected this with some 19th century writers, but how does it effect our writing?

Until Monday, I thought I was a naturally nervous person, that it was part of who I am and I had to deal with it. Monday I faced some of the reasons why that's not true. Monday I had to inventory some of my demons and realize how they effected me. And this wasn't done in the safety of the psychologist's office. This hit me like a sledgehammer several hours later. And I'm still recoiling.

But I also realized that the struggles my characters go through are quite literally the same struggles that I go through. I downright torture Étienne, and his turmoil is a veiled commentary on what I've faced and how I feel about my life.

We all do it. If we don't use our characters to vent or explore our emotions, then we give them the opportunities we want or we let them chase our dreams.

Writing. Ultimate psychotherapy.

What are you writing?

Personal tales

As a little girl, I used to spend a great deal of time at my neighbor's house. I probably told her everything, probably in more detail than a should have.

But she laughed at my stories. I have always liked telling stories and making people laugh, or feel, feel anything.

This came back to me last night, when I told a friend the very personal tale of what happened when I brought my Jacqueline Susann novel to the gynecologist's office. I also realized too many of my recent tales have involved work and the people I work with. I have the traditional child stories, too. But it's been a long time since I had a fun personal story to tell.

Here's an excerpt:
"I walk into the office today, and strangely, I can't find any magazines other than Highlights. And I read enough Highlights at home. I brought a book, but I feel weird getting it out, because it's Jacqueline Susann's Once is Not Enough. Bad literary choice. I should have brought The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or even David Sedaris. But I didn't.

I open the book carefully, on my lap so no one can read the cover. Normally, I wouldn't hide it, but who brings SMUT to the OB/GYN's office? And I open it to the chapter where Linda is telling January what she needs to do to get a man aroused, and then January goes for a vitamin shot that makes her horny.

They call my name. "

Which also reminds me. Since we're in between semesters, I took some books out of both libraries-- public and college. I'm currently working on:

• The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
• Naked by David Sedaris
• Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Sedaris
• The French translation of Me Talk Pretty One Day, Sedaris
• Once is Not Enough
• some novel with Cézanne in the title
• A history of the bra in America
• A fashion reader (okay, two fashion readers)