July 3, 2009
He lived almost his entire life with his parents.
His family’s apartment in the Jewish ghetto in Prague was tiny, noisy, and subject to the rule and whims of his tyrannical father. Kafka once noted, “I want to write and there’s a constant trembling in my forehead. I’m sitting in my room which is the noise headquarters of the whole apartment, doors are slamming everywhere. … Father breaks down the door of my room and marches through with the bottom of his bathrobe dragging behind him. Valli shouts through the foyers as if across a Parisian street, asking if father’s hat has been brushed. The front door makes a noise like a sore throat … Finally, father is gone, and all that remains is the more tender, hopeless peeping of the two canaries.”
In that noisy claustrophobic apartment with his parents and three sisters, Kafka would hypnotize himself to get in a frame of mind to write. He said, “Writing … is a deeper sleep than death … just as one wouldn’t pull a corpse from its grave, I can’t be dragged from my desk at night.”
–from The Writer’s Almanac for July 2, 2009
***
Sigh.
I’m slowly working my way back into my book after a little hiatus. I’d like to say I can’t be dragged from my desk, but I’m easily distracted. Still, I forge on!
Got a lovely email from Lee who inspires me to no end:
You will finish your book. I know you will. We want there to be the sense of time passing in it — when books take a long time to write, I think the readers can really feel that. Take your time with it. I love novels because they have in them everything the author has in his brain at that time — I really do believe that. What you know about people, about the world, about geography, about talking and language. Novels sort of use up everything that you have.
What a gem. (by the way, his book will be out from Kensington in the near future!)
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June 27, 2009
Why am I taking so long to read Blake Bailey’s Cheever: A Life? Maybe because I’ve been so busy (we’ve been so busy) with unpacking in our new home. I’d like to think it’s because I want to savor every moment of Cheever’s life, want to linger longer in the anecdotes and memories and recollections of others.
Here’s what he says in 1940 about writing for the New Yorker:
It is still, even in writing for the New Yorker, a question of feeling strongly, of being alive. It can be the first thing you see in the morning; a wet roof reflecting the bleak light, the suspicion that your wife’s legs under the table may be touching the legs of someone else, the happiness of burning up the road between New Haven and Sturbridge on your way home. In signing a contract with the New Yorker there are certain apprehensions as if writing were a mystery, something as chancey as a long shot on a wet track with mud all over the silks and the bums crowded in under the grandstand out of the rain. I have twelve stories to write and they’ll be good.
and here’s another gem:
Cheever would lie on his bunk and reflect on those lost, lazy days in prelapsarian Pennsylvania: “shopping in Frenchtown, building a fire to burn the damp out of the house, the first drink at four o’clock on the noste, the second drink at four-fifteen, the venery, the eating, the noise of the brook and the ice-box motor at night, morning sunlight, breakfast, a walk into Frenchtown maybe or raking hay or cutting wood.”
**
I’m teaching a new nonfiction/memoir writing class starting this week that runs for six weeks and still teaching summer school; now that our move is over i’m eager to get back to my book, which has been on hold (except for a few notes here and there) for too long now.
Cheever photo from Vanity Fair.
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June 23, 2009
According to The Writer’s Almanac (on NPR):
It was on this day (June 23) in 1868 that the typewriter was patented, by Christopher Sholes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1873, he sold the patent to the Remington Arms Co., a famous gun maker, for $12,000. There had been typewriters before, but they weren’t very practical — it took longer to type a letter than to write it by hand. The first commercial typewriter based on Sholes’ design, a Remington Model 1, went on the market in 1874.
Ernest Hemingway, loved his Royal typewriter. He kept it in his bedroom so it would never be too far away, and he put it on top of a bookshelf and wrote standing up.
Hunter S. Thompson, wrote on a red IBM Selectric. One of his first jobs was as a copy boy for Time, and while he was supposed to be working, he used a typewriter and typed out, word for word, all of The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms, in order to learn something about writing style.
Jack Kerouac, was fast at typing, and it frustrated him to have to change the paper so often. So he took long sheets of drawing paper, trimmed them to fit in the machine, and wrote all of On the Road that way. When he taped them together at the end, the manuscript was 120 feet long.
Ted and I are slowly unpacking into our new home– a lovely, bright, full of windows mid-century modern home, and today Ted set up my desk in my own little office alcove. As I arrange my things, my books, my bookshelf, I’m thinking of places to put my own vintage typewriter–a beautiful gray Olympia in an olive green case–a gift from my dear dear friends Dawn and her lovely wife-to-be Adriana and their kids Lorelei and Noah (thank you!!). I think it’s from the late 1950s or early 60s, based on this fab website about typewriters: Typewriter Database. I only have the serial number (1753872) but can’t tell what the model number is.
If anyone knows about vintage typewriters give me a holler!
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June 19, 2009
Dear Blog,
I’m so sorry for neglecting you, but, you see, we are moving (Ted and I) to a new home– a real house with a yard and a dishwasher and a garage! So I promise I’ll spend more time with you as soon as we get everything settled there (this weekend).
In the meantime, here’s a lovely poem by Stephen Dunn.
Questions by Stephen Dunn
If on a summer afternoon a man should find himself in love with only one woman in a sea of women, all the others mere half-naked swimmers and floaters, and if that one woman therefore is clad in radiance while the mere others are burdened by their bikinis, then what does he do with a world suddenly so small, the once unbiased sun shining solely on her? And if that afternoon turns dark, fat clouds like critics dampening the already wet sea, does the man run– he normally would–for cover, or does he dive deeper in, get so wet he is beyond wetness in all underworld utterly hers? And when he comes up for air, as he must, when he dries off and dresses up, as he must, how will the pedestrian streets feel?
What will the street lamps illuminate? How exactly will he hold her so that everyone can see she doesn’t belong to him, and he won’t let go?
“Questions” by Stephen Dunn, from Local Visitations. (c) W.W. Norton & company, 2003. Reprinted with permission (from the website The Writer’s Almanac).
PS–It’s Salmon Rushdie’s Birthday today–happy bday!
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June 11, 2009
Ted and I are in the process of moving from La Jolla to Azalea Park. When I say in the process I mean we are:
Stressing
Thinking about packing
Stressing
Worrying about having enough money to survive this summer
Stressing
Collecting Boxes for packing
It’s a beautiful neighborhood and gorgeous house so here’s hoping it all goes smoothly.
Oh, did I mention I start teaching this Monday (great time to move, eh?) for 6 weeks.
Eesh.
So, to keep my sanity i’ve been reading Blake Bailey’s Cheever: A Life– really compelling stuff.
In 1934, when John Cheever was 22 he lived on Hudson Street in NYC and was hanging out with “Agee and Sherwood Anderson and [John] Dos Passos, as well as a good deal of his beloved [E.E.] Cummings.”
Wow.
I also made two new postcards for my Cowboys and Flowers Series.
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May 28, 2009
This just in from my Merriam-Webster Daily (emailed) Dictionary:
Merriam-Webster’s
Word of the Day
May 28
eclogue
\ECK-log\
noun
Meaning
: a poem in which shepherds converse
Example Sentence
“Be it in the appropriation of the goatherd or shepherd in the pastoral eclogue, or the neatly controlled terraces of the Georgics, the pastoral has always been an idyllicised representation of the rural world….” (John Kinsella, The Literary Review, January 2005).
Did you know?
Although the eclogue first appeared in the Idylls of the Greek poet Theocritus, it was the 10 Eclogues (or Bucolics) of the Roman poet Virgil that gave us the word “eclogue.” (The Latin title “Eclogae” literally meant “selections.”) The eclogue was popular in the Renaissance and through the 17th century, when less formal eclogues were written. As our example sentence suggests, the eclogue traditionally depicted rural life as free from the complexity and corruption of more citified realms. The poets of the Romantic period rebelled against the artificiality of the older pastoral, and the eclogue fell out of favor. In more modern times, though, the term “eclogue” has been applied to pastoral poems involving the conversations of people other than shepherds, often with heavy doses of irony.
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
Now go write your Eclogue! (i’m off to Cincinnati for Ted’s mom’s 70th Birthday).
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May 27, 2009
John Cheever would have been 97 today. This year saw the publication of Cheever: A Life, a comprehensive (and well reviewed) biography by Blake Bailey. It’s next on my list of books to read– I’ll start it this weekend while we’re in Cincinnati visiting Ted’s mom.
Cheever said, “A page of good prose remains invincible.”
Cheever once described the writer’s task as to evoke “the perfumes of life: sea water, the smoke of burning hemlock and the breasts of women.”
And he wrote, “The world that was not mine yesterday now lies spread out at my feet, a splendor. I seem, in the middle of the night, to have returned to the world of apples, the orchards of Heaven. Perhaps I should take my problems to a shrink, or perhaps I should enjoy the apples that I have, streaked with color like the evening sky.”
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May 23, 2009
School’s out for about three weeks (well, ok, I have to go back for one day to give a final exam), so i’m getting some sleep, seeing friends, making meals (just made this incredible curry pasta dish–thanks Felicia!), and trying to be crafty. Made these Thank You cards– some of which will be/are going out to friends and family this week (thanks for my super birthday fun).
I used this beautiful, thin Japanese paper and then various clippings/ads from a Life Magazines from 1954. (inspired by Lia’s wonderful art).
Posted in Uncategorized, collage, crafts 1 Comment »
May 21, 2009
No, i’m not dead–but you wouldn’t know it based on my lack of posting lately.
It’s been a hectic and challenging last few weeks. Some highlights:
A couple of weeks ago, as you may know, I took Tom Spanbauer’s Dangerous Writing workshop– three intense days of talking, writing, analyzing about what we are afraid of in our writing, about how to get to some of those places we worry about going in our writing, and even how to be better writers on the sentence level. Exhausting and insightful. I’m actually going to rewrite parts of my novel based on what I gleaned from the class.
I’m wrapping up my teaching semester, a semester that found me receiving an Excellence in Teaching Award–given to me by the college that I primarily teach at. It was a complete surprise, and a wonderful gesture on the part of my Chair. Now can I parlay it into a full time job…? I’m hoping at some point.
I was also awarded a substantial fellowship from Vermont Studio Center for Jan 2010 (it sounds so far away, but really only 8 months). I’ve accepted (of course), so I guess in the coming months I better get out my snow boots and winter clothes.
And, well, umm, I turned 40. Yes 40. On April 29th. I almost can’t believe it. Even as recent as this week, the thought came over me that, wow, i’m 40. In ten years I’ll be 50–half a century old.
I’m trying not to get bogged down in the ole “what have I done in my life now that i’m 40″ whining… and instead trying to focus on what i’m doing next, and the fact that I have a good life, I have my health, a wonderful husband who is doing some incredible stuff with his PhD, my cat Hermia is still alive at 18 years (for better or worse), the best is yet to come, right?
Besides, Wallace Stevens didn’t publish his poems until he was in his 40s!
Speaking of ageless writers, here’s a bizarre, zany book I got for 25 cents at the college library where I teach. It’s called Psychic Messages from Oscar Wilde, by Hester Dowden. The book is called a modernist hauntology, and is made up of Ouija board/seance messages from Oscar Wilde written down in the early 1920s. It’s fascinating stuff. Not sure what I want to do with it– do I use it as ephemera or do I preserve the book as it is?
Here are a few pictures:
Being dead is the most boring experience in life. That is, if one excepts being married or dining with a schoolmaster.
Posted in my writing, teaching, vintage books, writers 1 Comment »
May 14, 2009
Today is fiction and travel writer Mary Morris‘ birthday.
She said, “Life only seemed to come together for me in stories and in journeys and those two ‘narratives’ — one of the mind and the other of the road — have shaped my life.”
Stories and journeys. I like that. We all have both, but not everyone puts it on paper, right?
**So, I do want to write about my Dangerous Writing workshop from last weekend, which was incredible, but i’m still processing and decompressing. More to come.
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