The extraordinarily innovative American composer Henry Cowell took Europe by storm as a touring pianist in the 1920s, playing his unforgettable compositions that often required using the entire forearm to play dozens of keys simultaneously. In later years he returned to give talks about his music and American music under the auspices of the State Department.
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Of course I teach, write, and write about memoir. Of course I write, and write about, young adult literature. Of course I take my stab at poems.
But don't think I'm not also in love with, perhaps most deeply admiring of, novels written for adults. Because I have not found a way to do this work myself. Because I don't know how.
Yesterday I raved about
Swimming Home. This past weekend, in the
Chicago Tribune, Reply to a Letter from Helga. A few weeks ago,
The Colour of Milk, and before that
You Remind Me of Me, The Orchardist,
Boleto,
Book of Clouds, Out Stealing Horses,
The Disappeared, American Music,
The Sense of an Ending, the Alice McDermott novels, the books featured in this yellowing snapshot above (and others). These slender books that devastate with their shimmering, dangerous sentence, structure, form. These books that have left me staggered on the couch.
I don't know what I would do without them, truly. I don't know that I'd have the same faith in humankind if these books were not now in my blood, if they were not (fractionally) mine.
There is still room to do what no one has ever done before. There are still stories untold. I may be getting older, but: there are more stories to be found. Genius abounds.
A flight of unexpected corporate work came in, and I was awake most of the night getting it done. At 5:30 AM I thought it might be best to close my eyes for an hour or so, today being a teaching day at Penn. I pulled two blankets to my chin on the downstairs couch and didn't sleep until, suddenly, I was trapped in the net of a flash dream. It went something like this:
I was at a crowded bookstore, doing a
Handling the Truth event, which is to say teaching a memoir workshop. A pretty young writer approached, clutching Jane Mendelsohn's magnificent
American Music to her breast.
"I so loved this book, thank you for writing it," she said.
"Oh," I said. "It's a lovely book, a beautiful book. But I didn't...."
Interrupting me, the young writer began to speak, in detail, of her book love. I nodded—of course, of course; I had raved about it endlessly myself. "But," I kept saying. "But...." Thwarted time and again in my desire to disclose as she went on and on. Then, interrupting herself, she said, "I guess some author is here for the
Handling the Truth event."
I nodded.
Leaning close, she confided, "I'm not staying for that. The book seems a tad overdone."
I never got to say what was true—about
American Music, about
Truth.
I hate that.
Readers of this blog know how tormented I've been about the whole book trailer thing. Do trailers matter? Should I indulge? Do I have a trailer state of mind?
Well, you know what I mean. For my home-made, no-budget Small Damages trailer, I decided to go with quiet. With photographs I took throughout my travels in Spain, with a hand-strummed guitar riff that my husband recorded out in his old garage, and with a few words from early readers. I knew I couldn't approximate Hollywood glam. It seemed wrong to try. And besides, Small Damages is a story of discovery, not just of self, but of place. There are few places more beautiful, to me, than my characters' southern Spain.
Lately, Nina Metz has been pondering the trailer topic, too. She writes of it with great humor and pizzazz in this Chicago Tribune story. Anyone contemplating the making of a trailer should take a look—not just for what Metz herself has to say, but for what her cast of interviewees contributes. Among them is the very smart Nick Davis (who is married to the tremendously talented Jane Mendelsohn, the author of one of my favorite books, American Music).
And if you are in the it's-a-very-hot-day-and-I-can't-concentrate-on-words frame of mind, do yourself the favor of combing the story for its links to effective "trailers," particularly the extravagantly preposterous faux effort by Gary Shteyngart. It had me snorting with laughter.
Of your list I've only read one: Out Stealing Horses. It was a near perfect novel. I shall have to check out the rest. Perhaps not writing adult literary fiction allows us to enjoy it the more. I can sink into the story without analyzing it to pieces.
And now I have my entire reading list for the month of February ;) Why thank you, lovely Beth.
That's wonderful, Beth. I'm saving these to my list.