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I can't tell you how much I love this book, how in awe I sat of this story, an elaborate nest of its own. I'd copy every beautiful sentence from this novel and leave it here for you, but that is the gift of Kephart's book, sitting with its soft feathered pages. This book is not a tangle. It is an incredible, careful, deliberate weave. Ribbons and strands of story coming together to create something exquisite and beautiful. Like Nadia's very first steal, which involves taking apart the words and language she is losing her grip on and braiding it back together in pieces, this book is a similar, spectacular creation.
From This Too (the full review is
here).
To have been understood. So thoroughly. Like this. To be taken into Melissa's own life, heart, mind, travels.
Thank you, Melissa Sarno.
There was no evidence of a bicycle, but Bill Cunningham,
New York Times style photographer and the subject of
this amazing documentary (watched here because Melissa Sarno gave me the word), was out among the nearly 200 craftspeople at the 38th Annual Philadelphia Museum of Art Contemporary Craft Show.
He just kept passing by—lanky and tipping up on his toes, camera in hand, a coy smile when someone called out, "Are you Bill Cunningham?" Oh, jeepers, his smile said, recognized
again. He just kept looking and nodding, his presence electrifying the crowd. Bill Cunningham in Philadelphia. Yes, we Philadelphians felt proud.
Meanwhile, I bought a glorious something from
Cathy Rose of New Orleans (worth taking a look at this link, truly her work is remarkable)—an addition to my small but growing doll and mask collection. Meanwhile, my husband and I went off for a Reading Terminal lunch—Salumeri's, of course. Meanwhile, we returned to a lit-up sky and I slipped out for a Kelly Simmons rendezvous—a gir's afternoon, silver and gold. When I returned home, walking a brisk dark, a full moon rising, my son called with deliriously good news. You want to know the definition of perseverance, creativity, optimism, extreme hard work, and lessons in hopefulness? I will tell you the story of these past few months and my son. I will tell you everything he taught me, and I will say, again and for the record, I would be half the person that I am without him.
Today I'm off to the woods to teach memoir at the Schuylkill Center, part of the Musehouse Writing Retreat. I'll slip away afterward to see my friend Karen Rile. And then I'll come home and get ready for tomorrow, when I'll see my dear friend Jennifer Brown moderating the Caldecott panel—Chris Van Allsburg, David Wiesner, and Brian Selznick—at Friends' Central School in Wynnewood. (Two o'clock, and hosted by Children's Book World.)
And then I, like the rest of the world, will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I will just sit and think on it all.
I was escaping on Thursday as I made my way to the bookstore. The heat, a particular conversation, a pedigreed failure. In the summer, at bookstores, I tend to stand among those tables dedicated to middle- and high-school reading lists—looking at all that I've missed, scorning my own piecemeal education, regretting my only partially successful autodidactism. I studied the history and sociology of science at Penn. I teach memoir. I review (mostly) adult literary fiction. I have (most recently) been writing young adult fiction that is perhaps not really young adult fiction. I started out as a poet. I am currently researching the heck out of Bruce Springsteen. My triple-stacked bookshelves reflect my scattershot world. Despite the fact that I have tried, since I was a teen, to read at least three books a week (and, later in life,
The New Yorker,
New York Times, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and the book review sections of
The Washington Post,
the
Chicago Tribune, and the
Philadelphia Inquirer), I have a whole lot of gaps, always, to fill. I am embarrassed, often, by my own not-knowingness. I could not pass any test that might be given.
Thursday, ignoring the criminally ignored two dozen as-yet-unread books stacked on my office floor, I bought two more—
A Northern Light, which
Melissa Sarno recommended, and Truman Capote's
In Cold Blood. I have read all of Capote except
In Cold Blood. Don't ask why; it just happened.
Yesterday, between bouts of Springsteen research, I read
A Northern Light, a young adult novel written by Jennifer Donnelly, which was a Printz Honor Book when it was released ten years ago, earned numerous additional citations, and continues to be extremely well read today. Set in 1906 and featuring Mattie, a sixteen-year-old farm-bound girl who loves words,
A Northern Light is, I found, an instructive book—thoroughly researched, strategically structured, seeded with the right kind of issues for young readers of historical fiction (feminism, race relations, the value of education and literature). I loved, most of all, Donnelly's Weaver, an African American adolescent. Weaver has much to say, and Donnelly, wisely, gives him room—to be smart, to be angry, to be hopeful, to be Mattie's truest friend. Boy-girl friendships that are honest and meaningful and yet not tinged with erotic desire are so rare in books, and especially rare in young adult literature, and so I was happy to spend some time on this warm weekend making this acquaintance.
Two things happened this week: My friend Melissa Sarno got married to a beautiful man (and since she is a very beautiful woman, this is a heaven-made match) and I (as of a few hours ago) finished the first full draft of HANDLING THE TRUTH.
This may seem like a random pairing, but it is not, for it is dear and wise and good Melissa who, with a bit of Facebook jesting one lazy day, delivered unto me this book's title. She posted
this "A Few Good Men" video snatch on my wall. She dared me. It was all over after that. It seems especially fitting that these infamous movie lines were crafted by Aaron Sorkin, who gave the
perfect commencement speech at my son's university two weekends ago.
To purple (Melissa's favorite color). To truth. To intelligent jesting. And (we shall never forget) to Aaron Sorkin.
To sleeping in tomorrow.
On this day of enforced rest (doctor's orders following an unpretty breakdown of all still-working parts), I am spending idle time doing fun things like finishing Mary Karr's
The Liar's Club and, yes, joining Twitter.
Come be part of my Tweet world. Help me understand howit works. Make me smarter when people say "hashtag." I need to be smarter when people say "hashtag." And also "trending."
Here I am (I think this is right). I have a grand total of three tweets and a handful of very fine friends. Leave it to Melissa Sarno to find me first!
@BethKephart
Truth be told, I'm still struggling in these parts, and hence the sluggishness of my blog presence. I do hope to regain my perky self (Was I ever perky? Is it even appropriate at my age to be perky?). But between now and then, I would like to share two news items (both from the
New York Times) that friends have sent my way. My taste, my interests must be verging on the transparent.
Story number one: Draft. This is the new
Times Opinionator feature that promises "essays by grammarians, historians, linguists, journalists, novelists and others on the art of writing—from the comma to the tweet to the novel—and why a well-crafted sentence matters more than ever in the digital age." Jhumpa Lahiri's gorgeous piece
"My Life's Sentences" recalled, for the ever-lovely
Melissa Sarno, a piece I had written
here, about my obsession with the construct. (Thank you, Melissa, for making me famous today.)
Story number two:
Your Brain on Fiction. This Annie Murphy Paul essay on reading and the effects it has on our brains reinforces what those of us who have defended lies and lie telling (well, we have defended
novels) have been saying all along: "Reading great literature...enlarges and improves us as human beings."
I personally think the "great" matters in that Annie Murphy Paul essay. Which takes me straight back to my obsession with crafting fine sentences. Not easy sentences. Not obvious ones. Not the ones you've seen plenty of times before. But the ones that make us think.
Thank you, Melissa, Mandy, Paul, and Bonnie for making sure I see the good stuff. Thank you, Melissa, for pairing me with Jhumpa herself.
it began early. it moved through rain. my hair broomed up around my head. my client was so kind. and then lovely Melissa Sarno met me in her princess cape of purple and we walked until my hair was a cloud and I was on the train home again.
I want to talk for a moment about connections—about the way one thing leads to the next.
The story starts with this blog, begun in a vacuum in 2007, begun with absolutely no idea of what a blog might reap, or what a blog should be. (As you can probably tell, I am still figuring that out.)
Somewhere along the way, somehow, the magnificent
My Friend Amy found her way here. And because My Friend Amy had, scores of others did, too. My Friend Amy is that kind of gal.
Among the My Friend Amy coterie was one Melissa Sarno, now a dear, amazing, smart, funny, treasured friend. Melissa is a writer and producer for a toy company by day, as she will tell you on
her exceedingly intelligent blog. She is a fiction writer by (extremely late) night. In between she keeps me laughing with her tales and her adventures, her threats to visit upon me the world's best pairing of cookies and wine, say, or a perilously stacked cone of ice cream. Twice Melissa has stood before me live and in person at the BEA. Always I learn from her.
Last week, Melissa was away. Yesterday she was at certain tennis match. This morning, I turned on this computer to find Melissa right here, with me, undertaking a
Stealth (which is to say surprise) In Anticipation of You Are My Only giveaway. It's pretty big. It's so Melissa. It threw me for a Coney-Island-Roller-Coaster-quality loop. Please take a moment to visit her blog and see what she has in store for you.
Melissa, you rock. The next triple scoop is on me. Plus the world's best malbec.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 5/26/2011
Blog:
Beth Kephart Books
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I left the house at 5 AM yesterday, and walked, in the breaking dark, toward the train. The carnival lights from the Devon Horse Show grounds were shining just for me.
I arrived early to the Javits Center and
took a walk first within the silence, then among the onslaught of crowds. Soon I was at the Egmont USA booth, interviewing the wonderful
Rob Guzman, part of the Egmont USA marketing team. (Later in the day I had the privilege of interviewing Egmont USA's
Alison Weiss.)
In impromptu fashion (under Rob's raised eyebrow) I began signing books right there at the Egmont booth, flashing my
spanking-new bookmarks whenever I could. It wasn't long before I was in the presence of Florinda, a beautiful book blogger and a member of the
Armchair BEA team. We had a conversation, Florinda and I, and, thanks to Elizabeth Law, our dialogue was captured for all of time on film. Check the Armchair BEA blog later today to see what Florinda and I had to say.
Elizabeth Law of Egmont USA was my guide throughout the morning; in the rush of my signing,
Florinda of The 3Rs took our photograph. Soon, were we joined by some beautiful people—librarians, teachers, readers, parents, and blogger friends. There I am with Kathy of
BermudaOnion (I finally met her and she's as lovely as I knew she would be) and
Well, now you've done it...another one to add to my own teetering stack.
And I think you're being much too hard on yourself re the "gaps" in your literary background :)
I can so relate to what you express here about the gaps, and yet when I look at you I am in awe of the breadth of your knowledge and the amount you read.
A Northern Light is an excellent book. I especially liked that Mattie had a "word of the day" and even while working would ponder that word, coming up with all sorts of new ideas. Eventually, of course, Mattie thinks the unthinkable:
"Jezzum ... What if God was a woman? Would the pope be out of a job? Would the president be a woman, too? And the governor? And the sheriff? And when people got married, would the man have to honor and obey? Would only the women be allowed to vote? Emily Baxter's poems made my head hurt. They made me think of so many questions and possibilities" (p. 208).
Here's my review from a couple of years ago. (SPOILER: The comments say perhaps a bit too much, if you haven't read the book.)
http://bonniesbooks.blogspot.com/2010/01/northern-light-by-jennifer-donnelly.html
Oh, I'm so glad you enjoyed your time with it! I found the book instructive as well. If YOU are embarrassed by your own not-knowingness I should hide in a cave of shame. So many books...so little time. :)
Sounds like you're having a great time.
Mattie feels like a personal friend. So glad you two have met. xo