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Room (2015) is a movie directed by Lenny Abrahamson, written by Emma Donoghue (based on her award-winning novel), and starring Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay. It’s about a woman kept prisoner by a rapist in a backyard shed for seven years where she gives birth to a son and raises him for five years before […]

The post The Heroine’s Journey in Room appeared first on Cathrin Hagey.

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I was three years into writing a book that in some ways deals with the multiple strains and awful unknowing of a kidnapping when I learned about Emma Donoghue's new novel, Room.  Within a nanosecond, it seemed, Room had become the rage—awards listed and best selling.  I did what I could to filter out the news until I had written the final sentence of my own story, set it aside, let it breathe.

That was several weeks ago.  Yesterday and early this morning I sat with Room and read it through.  It is not at all the story I have written, but it fascinated me nonetheless—to walk this terrain with the talented Donoghue, to see just where her mind went as she conjured the five-year-old narrator, Jack, who in a language nearly his own tells the story of being sequestered for his first five years in an 11 x 11 foot space with his mother.  Ma was just nineteen years old and a college student when she was stolen straight out of her life.  She has found a way to survive and to mother in an unyielding room whose only view to the outside is via a skylight.  Songs, games, stories keep the two alive.  A daring escape leads them to cacophonous Outside.  Outside doesn't just confuse Jack.  It often angers him.  Ma, for her part, is relieved and abraded.  She will suffer a long time, as victims do.

The reviewers have been most keen on Jack's linguistics—his peculiar but never confusing way of speaking.  It's like reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, except that instead of moocows and nicens little boy named baby tuckoo we have a narrator who depicts his confinement to us in expressive, open language:  I jump onto Rocker to look at Watch, he says 07:14.  I can skateboard onto Rocker without holding on to her, then I whee back onto Duvet and I'm snowboarding instead.

It is Jack's own bright world, for he knows no better.  It is his mother's hell; she tries to protect him.  Donoghue gives us Ma's ache through her naive-wise son's eyes.  Because we know more than Jack can, we are made queasy, uncomfortable, prickled.  Because Jack is telling the story, we have hope.

I admire writers who create scenarios that are as tight and fortified as Jack's 11 x 11 room and yet find a way out, a gap between the bars, a path toward resolution.  Room had me turning the pages, intent, always, on finding out what happened.  It is a book, as many have said, that won't be soon forgotten.

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Lauren, Publicity Assistant

This weekend, James S. Fishkin, Professor of Communication and Political Science at Stanford University and Director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy, will conduct a Deliberative Poll® in Michigan. A scientific sample of 200+ people will convene in Lansing to deliberate about the state’s economic future, and in the end, the poll will reveal what the public thinks about these issues, both before and after it has had a chance to become informed.

Fishkin’s most recent book, When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation, explains this method of polling. It combines a new theory of democracy with actual practice, and has demonstrated how an idea that harks back to ancient Athens can be used to revive modern democracies. Fishkin and his collaborators have already conducted deliberative democracy projects in the United States, China, Britain, Denmark, Australia, Italy, Bulgaria, Northern Ireland, and in the entire European Union. These projects have resulted in the massive expansion of wind power in Texas, the building of sewage treatment plants in China, and greater mutual understanding between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

When the People Speak is accompanied by a DVD of “Europe in One Room” by Emmy Award-winning documentary makers Paladin Invision. The film recounts one of the most challenging deliberative democracy efforts with a scientific sample from 27 countries speaking 21 languages. Watch the trailer after the jump.

EUROPE IN ONE ROOM
Courtesy of the Center for Deliberative Democracy

Click here to view the embedded video.

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What are you doing during lunch tomorrow?  If it involves sitting at your desk eating a sandwich consider joining us in Bryant Park.  Oxford University Press has teamed up with the Bryant Park Reading Room to host a FREE discussion of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer led by John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper’s Magazine and author, most recently, of You Can’t be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America. In the blog post after the break MacArthur introduces us to the relationship between Harper’s and Mark Twain.

So be sure to come to the Bryant Park Reading Room (northern edge of the park), Tuesday, July 21st from 12:30 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. The rain venue (don’t worry we are doing our best no-rain dances) is The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen Building, 20 West 44th Street. Sign up in advance and receive a FREE copy of the Oxford World’s Classic, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (offer is limited while supply lasts).

The histories of Mark Twain, William Dean Howells and Harper’s Magazine are so intimately linked, so important to the fabric of the magazine, that I talk about Twain and Howells around the office as if they were still alive. The other day I told a staff meeting that as long as I was running Harper’s, it would remain a literary magazine that also publishes journalism — not the other way around — because of Howells’s and Twain’s ever-present legacy.

Howells met Twain in 1869, three years after Twain had published his first long narrative in Harper’s, “43 Days in an Open Boat.” As the future literary editor of Harper’s recalled, “At the time of our first meeting…Clemens (as I must call him instead of Mark Twain, which seemed always somehow to mask him from my personal sense) was wearing a sealskin coat, with the fur out, in the satisfaction of a caprice, or the love of strong effect which he was apt to indulge through life.” It’s no coincidence that for our special 150th anniversary issue in 2000, we constructed a cover photo of Twain in his dandy suit facing Tom Wolfe in his dandy suit.

Clemens and Howells became good friends and in 1875 the genius from Hannibal asked Howells to read the manuscript of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. “I am glad to remember that I thoroughly liked The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” Howells wrote, “and said so with every possible amplification. Very likely, I also made my suggestions for its improvement; I could not have been a real critic without that; and I have no doubt they were gratefully accepted and, I hope, never acted upon.” Howells was underrating his influence on Twain, who penned over 80 pieces for Harper’s. As a critic and a fine novelist in his own right, Howells was correct — Tom Sawyer is a great American novel. Indeed, not everyone agrees that it’s any less of an achievement than the more widely acclaimed (at least in serious literary circles) Huckleberry Finn. I’m looking forward to talking about the book next week and finding out the answer to a number of questions: for example, precisely how old is Tom Sawyer? I assume the Twain scholars in the audience will enlighten me on this and other matters.

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1. Go for a run. 

2. Rent a movie.

3. Build a card tower.

4. Write stuff down backwards and then read it in a mirror.

5. Buy a trampoline.  

6. Jump on it.

7. Crank up some tunes.

8. Try to lick your elbow.

9. Read a good book.

10. Clean up your room.

11. Start a blog.

12. Watch people’s fails on YouTube,

13. Prank call a friend.

14. Find a wall and see how high you can get your hand by jumping.

15. Wet your hair and style it.

16. Start a new instrument.

17. Find a job.

18. Put iodine on any open cuts.  Being bored will seem pretty good after this.

19. Go for a walk and comment on people to your self.

20. Learn how to cook something tasty.

21. Write a story.

22. Take a hot shower.

23. See how far you can get a paper airplane to fly.

24. Wikipedia Race (google it).

25.  Think of something else to do when bored and comment it for others to read.

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1. Go for a run. 

2. Rent a movie.

3. Build a card tower.

4. Write stuff down backwards and then read it in a mirror.

5. Buy a trampoline.  

6. Jump on it.

7. Crank up some tunes.

8. Try to lick your elbow.

9. Read a good book.

10. Clean up your room.

11. Start a blog.

12. Watch people’s fails on YouTube,

13. Prank call a friend.

14. Find a wall and see how high you can get your hand by jumping.

15. Wet your hair and style it.

16. Start a new instrument.

17. Find a job.

18. Put iodine on any open cuts.  Being bored will seem pretty good after this.

19. Go for a walk and comment on people to your self.

20. Learn how to cook something tasty.

21. Write a story.

22. Take a hot shower.

23. See how far you can get a paper airplane to fly.

24. Wikipedia Race (google it).

25.  Think of something else to do when bored and comment it for others to read.

Add a Comment

WOW! Last week was about as busy a week as I've had in a long time, and the really weird thing about it is that I didn't do a single piece of illustration or design work. Not one!

This week is my wife's first back at school and it's a new school to boot. Because of that I spent all of last week moving everything from her old classroom that we had plopped down into storage, out of storage and into her new room...by myself.

You may not think that sounds like a whole heck of a lot, but this woman has collected a LOT of books in her twelve years of teaching and a lot of books mean a lot of heavy boxes. We actually had to rent a 16 foot U-Haul in order to move all this stuff.

After the moving was done I spent a good eight hours a day, every day, moving desks, moving tables, organizing papers, papering her walls, hanging stuff on those walls, creating more stuff to be hung on those walls, then hanging that created stuff up!

Toss in the fact that the air conditioning wasn't working because the school was still being built, and it was well over 100 outside and you've got a recipe for a tired and very stinky me.

Anyway, all is well that ends well I suppose, and her first day back went decently so I guess it was worth it.

She's going to owe me though...oh yes, she surly is...

Hopefully I can find some time this week to put the kibosh on this darn monster piece.

Steve~

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Bantam Senior Editor Juliet Ulman acquired Christopher Barzak's One for Sorrow and shepherded it into print.

I really have the wonderful Mumpsimus himself to thank for bringing us together. Matt and I met in person for the first time at the World Fantasy Convention in Madison, Wisconsin, and we were sitting around one night, probably resting from a bout of giggling, talking about short story authors we admired and who I'd been following. I was wishing aloud that some of my favorites had a book in them, and exclaimed in frustration, "Christopher Barzak! Now why hasn't he written a novel!?" To which Matt calmly replied, "But he has." A few minutes later, we'd established that Chris had written a novel, Matt had seen it, and Matt would pass on word that I wanted to take a look. When I got back from the convention, the manuscript was waiting for me.

Reading One for Sorrow for the first time is an experience I will never forget. I couldn't stop myself from describing the sensation to people for months afterwards, even as I realized that, at best, I was coming off as a bit odd. I remember turning page after page, a horrible storm of butterflies building in my stomach with each sentence. As I read, I felt a little lightheaded and sick. I can tell you exactly what it felt like. It felt like when you're in the throes of a tremendous crush, a crush so overwhelming that instead of feeling a little happy and silly in that person's presence, instead you feel so nervous and overtaken with that fluttery adrenalized crush feeling that it's debilitating. That is what it felt like.

As far as the book, I knew we were a match. But what about the author?

I had some editorial concerns, and I wanted to make sure that Chris and I were on the same page as far as what direction to take the book -- so we struck up a correspondence. Before we'd even negotiated the deal, we exchanged several (long!) emails back and forth while he was still in Japan, talking about the book and what we wanted for it, and also just getting to know each other and how our minds worked. We learned we both have a big love for Miyazaki, and especially My Neighbor Totoro; that we both come from very small, rural towns (his in the Midwest, mine in the Northeast) and carry them with us; and that we both believed in the same emotional heart of the book and wanted to travel on the same path. We brainstormed about how to get there, each of us tossing out ideas until typically, we'd figure out what the common core of all of our suggestions were, and find the right way to get to where we were going. It was immediate and exciting, this fizzing creative electricity. If the book and I were a match, it soon became clear to me that I'd gotten very lucky in that Chris and I had a real meeting of minds. No one but Chris could have written that book, and, for me at least, no working partnership but this one would have been quite as instinctive or fluid.

Revising One for Sorrow was a tremendously cooperative, collaborative process, and terrifically rich and rewarding for me as an editor. For some people, this kind of back-and-forth brainstorming and discussion would be done over the phone -- for us, it was the modern equivalent of letters flying back and forth, emails and emails and emails exploring our instinctive responses to the narrative, and our feelings about where it should go. This, truly, is why editors get out of bed in the morning. I really loved every minute of it, the debates, the burbling of ideas, the bright nova of light when someone hit upon something true. Chris is a thoughtful, intuitive writer, and through working on the book together, I think we learned more about each other than we could possibly have done any other way. In the end, I came to this with an electrifying crush on a beautiful, heartbreaking manuscript, and walked away with a rich, creative kinship that will stay with me even longer.

For which I will always, and happily, be in the debt of the Mumpsimus.

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