No Pulitzer Prize for Fiction!

I was shocked, shocked to discover that the folks that award the Pulizer Prize could not pick a winner in the category of Fiction.  Really?! No prize for fiction?  Ann Patchett (author of my favorite book--Bel Canto) wrote an excellent Op Ed for the NY Times berating them for their lack of a prize in this category.  In the editorial she surmises why it might have happened, reviews her own ideas for best fiction and concludes like this:

Let me underscore the obvious here: Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

Unfortunately, the world of literature lacks the scandal, hype and pretty dresses that draw people to the Academy Awards, which, by the way, is not an institution devoted to choosing the best movie every year as much as it is an institution designed to get people excited about going to the movies. The Pulitzer Prize is our best chance as writers and readers and booksellers to celebrate fiction. This was the year we all lost.

In my last post, I wrote about storytelling as an important survival skill.  Ms Patchett makes the observation that reading stories--long ones--is also an important thinking and skill building  tool.  Fiction, reading, books, all vital to our life on this planet and in these times.  Pulitzer did miss the boat when they failed to award that prize. 

Read on!

When bad things happen to good writers

I am enjoying a gorgeous run of spring weather and for the first time in a long time, I am having a hard time reading and enjoying books.  I have been reading a lot of articles and stories from on-line news and magazines.  Most of what I read can fit into short time spans (or maybe that should be short attention spans.)  My book pile grows, but I can't seem to focus.

I came across an amazing article in the New Yorker this weekend which reminds me of the simple fact that when bad things happen to good writers, the result is often an amazing narrative that brings home heartbreaking truth.

The Aquarium by Aleksander Herman in a June 2011 issue details his families' witness to his baby daughter's brain tumor and ensuing death.  It is not an easy story to read.  It is every parent's nightmare told in sad and all to true detail, but he makes some interesting observations about the power of storytelling to bring us comfort and healing.  Herman, while watching an older, healthy daughter cope with her sister's illness, beleives that the older daughter develops narrative abilities simply to survive.  He equates storytelling with survival: a basic human need.

I recognize this need and believe that we all share this same propensity to tell stories.  We tell the stories we tell to learn about ourselves, to reflect our own experience to the wider world--asking ourselves the questions: am I sane?  am I real? am I who I am supposed to be?  Am I like you?  Aleksander Herman is quite correct, our ability to relate in story is and probably always has been second to only food, water, and air as vital to life. At our dying breath, it is final words we have to say to end the story, and nothing else.

I don't think many of us are lucky enough to be able to write it. Writing for me is filled with solace and import, and I feel grateful that I have been given the gift of being able to use the written word.  I recognize that for most of us simply being able to tell our story out loud or paint our story or perform our story is also soul satisfying.  

I can only imagine that this lovely piece of writing was for Mr. Herman only a small start at healing what for him will be a lifetime of pain, and his daughter's imaginary friend, who she imbued with all the qualities of her sick sister, was also only a stab at understanding the enormous situation playing out in front of her.  For me, it was a chance to relate and to understand, storyteller and listener, as we take part in a great tradition of understanding ourselves, healing ourselves, and making connection, through the power of writing.

I recommend this story.  Thanks Mr. Herman.

Reviewing the Early Reviewer Program

I have been a part of the Librarything Early Review Program for almost five years. I sign up for books I think I would like to read, the publisher sends me one of them, I read it, write a review, and post it on their website and my own (if I choose).  I love this program and have been sent some great books over the years and also some real dogs.

On a few occasions, I never received the promised book, but for the most part every book arrived, pristine and new and I have read and reviewed every single one.  I usually receive memoirs and special interest books: Bonk, The Happiness Equation, Situations Matter.  I've read about gastronomy in France and Middle Eastern CIA agents, travel memoirs, self-improvement and cooking and eating.  I've learned a lot about subjects I never would have picked up a book on, and I have become better at evaluating writing.

I try to refrain from reading other reviewers until I have written my own, and am surprised when someone likes a book I hated or vice versa.  I have discovered that I should never request a mystery because I don't like mysteries, and once I looked past my own personal disdain for e-books and put in a request for an interesting e-book.

In the beginning I would get skipped over for a few months in a row but I have received a book pretty solidly every month for the past two years. I have gathered an impressive array of publishers proofs.  I think they know I am good for the review.

I stopped to write this review of the program, which I love, because I finally met my match.  I actually got a book a couldn't review or read.  Suffice to say it was a book in a genre I am not particularly interested in and have no experience reading.  I did not feel I could fairly evaluate it at all and I honestly did not think I could finish the book.   I have learned a lesson in reading the book descriptions more closely.

I think I will send the book to a friend who will like it and ask her to read and review it if she likes.  Sound good?  What do you do when faced with a book you should read, but can't?

Happy National Poetry Month

April is here which can only mean one thing:  Poetry!  Last weekend I had an opportunity to take poetry into the local jail.  The women I read and write with enjoyed this Naomi Shihab Nye poem:

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

it is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

We had some wonderful writing and conversation about kindness and sorrow.  

Mirror Mirror by Stephanie Hart

Early review of memoirs and stories about just an average woman coming of age in the 50's and 60's.  Ms Hart's writing is lovely and sweet.  Short bursts of observation about leaving home at 7 to attend boarding school when her parents divorced, her mother's alternating rage and undying love, her late life love, and her life in NYC.  These short stories and memories remind me why I love to write and also show me that really everyone has a story to tell.  All of us.  And it is within our power to tell it.

The book is divided into 4 parts and the first three parts are the memoirs. The last part is the most interesting for a writer to read.  She had memories of parents and grandparents and great grandparents that have been told to her as stories.  She has taken these stories and imagined them: place, street, people, smells and feelings and painted them into true tales. This writing and this ability to recreate what has been a part of family lore is especially exciting to read and think about.  Some of the stories in this last part seem a little disjointed. The flow is disrupted now and then, but overall, I loved the exercise and the writing.  They are smart and truly felt.

I don't think this book will get a lot of attention, but would be writer's should take note.  Write it! I would also be happy to lend it to anyone who wants to take a look.

You know when the men are gone by Siobhan Fallon

I don't often finish a collection of short stories.  I tend to finish one story, feel satisfied, and then move onto something else.  The storytelling in this fine new collection of home front war tales was so even and so captivating that I really wanted to read every one.

All of the tales (save one) in this collection are set at Fort Hood in Texas and all relate to the men who deploy to Iraq and their spouses who wait for them back home.   All the subjects are universal:  infidelity, grief, childhood, teen rebellion, and of course, divorce, and they are set uniquely against the back drop of the people who are left behind when men go to war.

I thoroughly enjoyed this look at a culture and customs that evolve around this interesting group of people.  What unique circumstances threw these people together and how do they make sense of all the craziness? The stories are very loosely connected by a character here and there, so you know that all the characters are part of the same big picture story.

As a writer, I am always looking for new ways to tell some universal themes, and I felt that Ms Fallon mined some clever ideas.  My only regret is that this was not longer.  I know from a life well lived, that for each of these perfectly rendered stories of chaos in the time of war, there are are at least 1,000 more.  I hope there are more, many many more.  This would make a great spring break read.

This book should be readily available at your local public library or, of course, on Amazon.

The Time Together by Carol Burnett

I'm so glad we had this time together

Just to have a laugh and sing a song

Seems we just get started and before you know it

Comes the time we have to say, "So Long!"

                  -from the Carol Burnett show

As a kid, I loved watching the Carol Burnett show on Saturday nights with my parents.  I was old enough to appreciate the zany humor of Carol and friends, especially the talented Tim Conway.  I laughed aloud along with my parents at Carol when she made fun of Gone with the Wind.  Her dress was made of curtains with the curtain rod still inserted.  The dress was  the classic television funny moment, and no one else but Carol could pull it off.  The dress now resides at the Smithsonian, testament to the wacky days of the Carol Burnett Show and her brilliant costume designer Bob Mackie.  

Carol tells many many tales of coming of age in the entertainment industry and all the people she met on the way up the ladder.  These stories are not literary feats or a great philosophy on life, rather just funny moments behind the scenes with some of America's most beloved entertainers and actors.  

It took me on a trip down memory lane.  Many of the sketches she writes about you can relive on youtube.  If you enjoy Carol Burnett, and want to take out a quick evening for some fun stories and funny reminiscences of a great comic lady, this would be a good book to pick up at the library.  I wonder if we could get her to host Saturday Night Live?

Meanwhile enjoy this old Carol Burnett sketch: