Ok, enough objectification.

The night was so literary! One of the best events we’ve had at the Ink Spot and surely one that affected all who attended. Ulin was there, courtesy of the PEN Center USA and the always wonderful Amy Wallen,  to plug his new book, The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, but he gave us much more than that. The book began as an original essay by Ulin from the LA Times 2009.

Says Ulin:

Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being. We possess the books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves.

Here’s another thing that Ulin said at the event that really resonated with me. Rather, it was more of a suggestion:

He explained that reading a book for 20- 30 min. before bed isn’t enough-- one should dedicate a good couple of hours every few days, or a few hours on the weekend, say a Saturday, to really read a book.

What a concept!

Most of my reading is propped up on my pillow at 11:30 pm (much like the lovely James Franco in the picture to the left). Me and Ted touching elbows as we read our books. But by the time we go to bed i’m so tired I can usually only get in about 15-30 minutes of reading before my head starts nodding. There are exceptions, I mean I have been known to read for an hour or more at bedtime but that’s usually because I’ve had too much coffee during the day.

I’d really like to take his advice though, and set aside a couple of hours to read each weekend (cuz lord knows I can’t do it during the week with my schedule). But how luxurious! Right? Reading a book for three hours on a Saturday. Who does that? Do you? It sounds wonderful.

The other anecdote (among many) that I loved but I can’t remember if it was Arthur Salm or David Ulin who told it was this little story:

A [fairly well known] writer [I can't remember his name!] had a visitor to his house and the visitor, looking at all of the books on his shelves, of which there were hundreds and hundreds, asked this writer, “Oh my, have you read all of these books?”

To which the writer replied, “Of course I haven’t read all of these books! Who would want to live in a house with books you’ve already read?”

I can’t tell you how many times people have asked Ted and myself this same question!

*Photo courtesy of the Guardian UK’s Writer’s Rooms series.

It was called “Escape Artist: The Case for Joan Crawford” and was written by David Denby. I like how the subtitle in the table of contents said: The Joan Crawford Problem. The piece is mostly a review of Donald Spoto’s new book about Crawford, but it’s also a nifty, convenient way for Denby to wax harshly (ok, and with some sympathy) on the broad-shouldered mega-star. He also discusses Faye Dunaway (mostly how “Mommie Dearest” did her in).

I read this while riding the elliptical at the gym (yes, back to the gym). There is this huge photo of Joan from “Mildred Pierce” (I first typed this as Milderd…mildewed?) and I have to admit I looked around to my left and right while doing my cardio to see if anyone could see what I was reading. Then I remembered: oh yeah, I go to a gay gym… or an almost gay gym, so it was probably not noticed at all.

Anyway, the only reason I’m writing about this is for one line. Well, there were lots of good lines from Denby in the piece, and it was actually pretty fascinating reading, lots of good tidbits, like the fact that she was born Lucille Le Sueur in San Antonio, Texas.  But I really loved this description of Joan, especially the last line:

[When she was 18] What prompted the two men to pull her out of a line of dancers? She was only five feet three, she had freckles, a mop of reddish hair, and broad, square shoulders, and she was a little heavy (a hundred and forty pounds) for her size. But they must have seen– they probably couldn’t have missed–an insatiable hunger. If you look at pictures of her at any age, the whites of her eyes show not just above the irises but below them, too. Her eyes are so wide open that she seems to be devouring the future.

Gotta love it.

I thought that Ricky Gervais started sort of slow but then he picked up momentum with some REALLY harsh zingers, one-liners. There’s speculation that these one-liners might have gotten him into trouble, though I doubt it. But boy were there some uncomfortably funny moments.

Speaking of one-liners, there are some terrific zingers in the book Cleopatra, by Stacy Schiff, which i’m not reading as fast as I was before–i’m only halfway through the 300 page book. I love the book, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes the information in it (of which there is A LOT) is overwhelming. Still, love this line  which begins the section on Mark Antony (the picture is of James Purefoy, who played MA in the miniseries Rome):

Sometimes it indeed seemed as if there were only ten women in Rome. And in Cicero’s view, Mark Antony had slept with every one of them.

Here’s another, this time actually a quote from Cicero himself, but it’s not as salacious as the previous (in fact it’s quite nice):

“…for as reason is the glory of man, so the lamp of reason is eloquence.”

Stacy Schiff is so smart. She packs the books with this information but she also makes these people and these places so very real–with these wonderful quips. About graffiti, which she explains has been around since before Cleopatra’s time (BC!), she writes:

Even in Cleopatra’s day there was such a thing as ancient history; somehow the world was older then, thick with legend, swathed in superstition. At her side Caesar could have marveled at twenty-eight centuries of architecture. Already visitors had burgled– and scrawled graffiti over– the tombs in the Valley of the Kings.*

*The most common graffito: “I saw, and I was amazed.”

Cleo was apparently not a light packer when she traveled:

She traveled too both as an institution and an individual, with physicians and philosophers, eunuchs, advisers, seamstresses, cooks, and with a full staff for Caesarion [her son]. With her went sumptuous gifts: jars of Nile water, shimmering fabrics, cinnamon, tapestries, alabaster pots of fragrance, gold beakers, mosaics, leopards.

Leopards! (Remember that car game? I’m going on a picnic and I’m taking…)

And, her sister, Arsinoe, was a bitch!

In her [Cleo's] exile [aka her travels with the leopards], Arsinoe, Cleopatra’s younger sister, persisted in her designs on the throne. Reprisong her coup of four years earlier, Arsinoe marshalled enough support in Ephesus to have herself proclaimed queen of Egypt.

I love these little tidbits!

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl– with the 1959 George Stevens movie tie-in (the book features actress Millie Perkins on the cover). My other vintage paperbacks are here. And here. And here. (click on the link on the sidebar for vintage books to see others of mine).

I would still love to one day find a vintage/antique paperback book display like the one in the picture.

I was obsessed with Egypt as a kid. This was during the King Tut craze of the mid-70s. It was King Tut mania! And then there was the Agatha Christie movie, Death on the Nile (still a favorite for the batty performance by Angela Lansbury and the blue-eyed charm of Simon MacCorkindale). I wanted so badly to go to Egypt and see the pyramids and ride a camel. Maybe one of these days.

And, I’ve always loved the musical number, Cleopatterer, performed by June Allyson and Ray McDonald in the MGM Jerome Kern biopic Till the Clouds Roll By (itself a number from the Kern musical Leave it to Jane).  The sounds a bit off, but click the picture to watch it. June at her husky-voiced best.

I’m almost finished reading the book I spoke about in my previous post (The Prince, The Showgirl, and Me) and I’m eying a stack of books by my bed. Which one next? The Pure Lover by David Plante? Model Home by Eric Pucher? A Case for God (got this last Christmas but still haven’t read it!) by Karen Armstrong? Great House by Nicole Krauss ? I absolutely loved The History of Love, her last book. I’m thinking I might start with A Case for God; every time I see it on my shelf I think about pulling it down and reading it. I’m compelled yet maybe intimidated by it. Time to do it!

In addition to reading, though, I’m finally getting back to the book I’m writing. It’s not a lot of time, three and a half weeks, but more than I usually have so I’m hoping to make some more progress. Lately I’ve been writing chapters involving a brand new character in the book–Limpie, a 17 year-old Shivwit Indian boy– well, he’s been in the book since the first chapter but I’m finally telling his story, as it were, in his chapters. His story actually comes through by means of an essay he’s writing in school, and so pieces from his essay, which read like letters to his teacher (he’s writing this essay as an extra credit assignment over the summer so he can graduate from high school), are in between the more traditional narrative. I’m finding so much heart and humor in Limpie who originally was going to just play a very minor part in the book.

Finally, I’m hoping to do some more creating–with my hands, but not just typing up my novel. I’ve got a few projects I’m working on or planning. Stuff to do in my little craft station out in the garage. One project involves these little freckled doll heads. I’m thinking of doing something like this. It involves plaster of paris! Unless someone out there has better ideas?

I’d also like to do something with these orange guns. Not sure what, though. Or maybe something with these cool old iron-on transfers from the 1940s (this one is of Van Johnson). And then I have all of those beautiful old window frames with the glass in them that I’d like to play around with.

Sigh.

I can’t believe it’s my winter break (and Christmas!). Cannot wait to get to some serious writing again, and reading.I’d like to read a book a week… can I do it?

Right now reading this terrific little book, The Prince, The Showgirl, and Me: Six Months on the Set with Marilyn and Olivier. It’s the journal entries of a young British man, Colin Clark, who was the 3rd Assistant Director (read: Go-Fer) on the film The Prince and the Showgirl, which starred (and was directed by) Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe in 1956. The book was written in the mid-90s and I’m enjoying the hell out of it. I think Clark was in his early 20s when he wrote the journal entries; they detail the day-to-day antics on the set. The problems with Marilyn, her lateness but also her vulnerability. She was a wreck on set but for some reasons when they looked at the dailies (that’s film talk for the footage shot every day) she was amazing. His journal entries are incredibly frank; he suspects (quite often) that Marilyn is high on drugs or alcohol, and says so often. But still through all of the trouble and anguish he has a deep admiration (not to mention lust) for her.

Clark also talks about Olivier’s frustrations, his marriage to Vivien Leigh, the parties, with sly hints at the director/star’s sexuality. Arthur Miller is an imposing figure as well.

The book is a hoot, full of hysterical (and historical) tidbits about the shooting, and especially the Brits impressions of us and our ‘Hollywood’ doings.  Not to mention it’s really helpful for me as the book I’m writing takes place on a film set/shooting in 1954, albeit in America; but still, the way a film is shot (not chronologically) the amount of people on a set, the terminology (though have to make sure they’re not British terms), etc.

Here’s one particularly funny (or is it tragic?) passage from his diary. Well, it had me in laughing throughout:

MM (Marilyn) doesn’t really forget her lines. It is more as if she had never quite learnt them–as if they are pinned to her mental noticeboard so loosely that the slightest puff of wind will send them floating to the floor.

This is very disconcerting to the other actors. Like going down a familiar staircase and missing a step, MM is suddenly not there. She can be in mid-speech, and then she gives a little frown, her lips part, her eyes look puzzled, and she stops. She doesn’t say “Oh drat, what is the next line?” or anything. She just stops.

You can see the trailer here.

Apparently there was a BBC documentary made about the book/film. Which you can see some of here.

There’s just no teaching. I applied for some part-time teaching at a couple of other schools but it looks pretty dismal.

Hopefully unemployment will kick in and they won’t screw me this time like they have in the past.

In other, happier news I went to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books last Saturday–took a bus up with Judy Reeves and other wonderful folk as part of San Diego Writers, Ink– and had a great, if overwhelming time. Overwhelming because there’s so much to do, see, so many books, panels, booths.

I did get to see panels featuring:

Colson Whitehead–looking awesome, handsome as usual and when he said, “I’m obsessed with outlining. I like to know what happens”– I wanted to go up and shake his hand, or kiss him. Probably kiss him. (ok, I admit to a guy-crush on Colson Whitehead. If that makes me gay, so be it. Oh, wait. I am gay).

Paul Harding—the guy that just won the Pulitzer and a Guggenheim (I bought and he signed his PP winning book: Tinkers, which looks beautiful and the reviews are staggeringly positive. He was also very sweet and gracious).

Rafael Yglesias–whose book, A Happy Marriage (a fictionalization of meeting his wife and then losing her to cancer), sounds heartbreaking and glorious and I think I’ll need to put it on my list. He also said, “Reading poetry helps bring emotional power to your own writing. You can’t make books or stories vivid without doing something to the language.”

Antonya Nelson–she was dead on when, speaking of the importance of reading (as learning tools, as inspiration, as teacher), she said: “A lot of what I’m writing is a response to what I’ve read.”

Marisa Silver–Love, love, love her story collection: Babe in Paradise who said “the story has to be an exploration for you.”

Ron Carlson– “I’m only interested in surviving the draft.” Love that line. I took a Creative Writing class from him at Arizona State in the mid-late 90s.

I also attended the “History Through the Lens of Fiction” panel featuring Tom Curwen, Gabrielle Burton, Thaisa Frank, and Indu Sundaresan. All very accomplished writers of historical fiction. One interesting thought I came away with is: “Finding parallels in your work (the historical fiction you are writing) and the world of today.”

Oh, and I came away with a new subscription to Tin House, too!

More on writing… later.

Today had one of the longest (and most productive) days of writing since I got back from Vermont.

Also, kind of nice to go with the hubby and write.

We went to down to The Ink Spot, the writing group/organization (San Diego Writers, Ink) that I work for and we both teach for downtown. Every other Sunday they have what they call, Room To Write, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. for members and provide a quiet space and tables and chairs and lots of light to write. If you live in San Diego you should really think about joining SDWInk!

After nearly four hours of working on a new scene in the book, I looked through my journal, the one I kept while in VT at the VSC.

Read through the notes I took when Amy Bloom, the visiting writer, gave her craft talk. Bloom is, in my humble opinion, a queen of the first line.

Here are some of the things I wrote down:

Make the characters come alive from the inside.

Create a dream the reader enters; the errors in syntax, form, character, etc., can destroy that dream.

The best novel strives to be like the best poem.

Character: see the world as he sees it.

And, if you spend the time to give them a name, they should also have a soul.

How does it feel inhabiting that world as that character?

They should sound like themselves, not like variations of YOU.

If you can’t imagine what it is a character does or says, don’t write about it.

A reader should encounter and create their own relationship with a character.

Always keep in mind:

1. Illuminating the character
2. Advancing the story
3. Giving a beautiful sentence

Don’t walk us through every moment—crossing the room, grabbing the door knob, etc.

Sometimes start with the very bare bones of a scene and then go back.

When you write, your loved ones, your audience, your parents are DEAD.

You make this good because it matters to YOU.

Read it aloud without inflection so you can hear every bad thing you’ve done.

Move a reader—like an actor—into and out of every scene.

Make your readers believe things really happened, even if it didn’t.

I’m really drawn back to the line: They should sound like themselves, not like variations of YOU.

So much of my writing has been autobiographical, even if loosely based on me or my life. And so I’m trying very hard to make this book, these characters, sound unlike anything else I’ve ever written. But I’m also wanting to move forward and not get hung up on lines and images in this first draft; so, gulp, I’m going to try to do a little bit of both. Work on language, but not get trapped and stopped up by the language—yet—so that I can press on and get through.

Mary Gordon was one of my favorite teachers during my MFA. She was generous, honest, and so precise in her feedback. She also made you feel like you were a friend to her. I loved visiting her apartment on the Upper West Side and chatting about writing.

Many of my NYC writer friends still see her and i’m so jealous. It’s been a long while since i’ve seen or spoken to her. One of these days I know I will reach out to her or our paths will cross.

She has a new book out: Reading Jesus–a Writer’s Encounter with the Gospels.

If you’ve never read her, I definitely recomend starting with Seeing Through Places: Reflections on Geography and Identity. An exceptional book of essays about travel/journeys–both geographic and emotional. But oh, she has so many great books out– and her collected stories… oof. You can read one of her essays here.

I don’t know think I knew what an important, influential woman of letters she was while I was in her class. She was so accessible and warm. I kept a notebook while in her class and some of the things she said still resonate:

“Don’t be afraid of making a mess” [with your writing]

“Why do we tend to rely on our ‘eye’ to tell a story? There are 5 other senses.”

“Richness gets lost if you don’t give descriptions and locations.”

“If the ‘garden is flourishing…’ what is it flourishing with? What is this suggesting? Smell… feel… texture…

what does it say about the person who gardens there?”

Thank you Mary Gordon! And Happy Birthday.