100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do by Kim Stafford

A few weeks ago I expressed my love and appreciation for this book on the elegant art of listening.  I was so impressed by the author's love of words and writing that I thought I would check out his new memoir  100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared.  It was not readily available at the bookstore, so I asked my public library if they would order it, and it showed up in about two weeks.  (Love the public library!)

This is such a fine and exceptional book that I can't stop thinking about it.  Stafford makes everything seem effortless yet profound. His writing is smooth and creamy and makes me want to eat it at every meal.  He is writing about his beloved brother who committed suicide 20 years earlier.  Mr Stafford remembers his brother in a series of stories from their youth together, their short adulthood together and the aftermath of living with such a tragic end to someone you loved.

Every week I sit in the company of great writers who pour their hearts out in short poems, and memoirs of their lives.  Word upon word, each writer is building a series of stories and vignettes not unlike these.  I loved this work.  All the stories individually and as a collective quilt of stories, were without question true and beautiful: honesty that cut to the bone of life.  My fellow writers and I can and do easily write this beautifully and could piece our pieces together to form a grand story, but something about the way he did it seemed profound and unreachable.  He has left something tugging at my heart. Writing that is worth emulating in its candor and vulnerability.

God Bless my library for buying this for me, but  I will have to buy my own copy.  There are many writing lessons to be learned here.

For my reader that lives in Portland. This man runs the Northwest Writing Institute.  You should check it out and take a class from him.  Better yet, I'll come visit and we can both take a course from him.

What books would you buy?

When I was a child my parents would remind us, "Don't forget to talk to strangers." How could we be helped if we got lost, or were hurt? And how else could we be citizens of the world? Our millions of intricate moves may be as direct and simple as making songs and learning from strangers.  ~ Kim Stafford

A good friend tuned me in to a slim book book by poet Kim Stafford.  The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft spoke to me on many levels.  There were a million passages to quote and use and copy in my work with women and storytelling.  It is a useful book that promotes at its core--listening for words and stories and life.  There were many chapters and ideas that took my writer's breath away. I feel certain I will return to it.

The punchline is that it is a library book, and I cannot write in (or for that matter keep) a library book.  Do you? Written in 2003, it is largely unavailable except on Amazon. I am certain to place an order for this book so that I can remind myself how to be a good listener of the muse that brings us story.

The various essays include writing exercises, stories about the writer's life (including a magical moment where Dick Cheney is the poet's muse), advice about how to listen and find story in everything, and a chapter on where to write.  (We devote a lot of conversation about ideal locations and conditions for writing in my writer's group.) He addresses fiction, non fiction and everything in between.  It felt like the most random, yet eloquent and useful how to write book that I have ever come across.

You'll need to order this one on Amazon as well unless you are lucky enough to have it at your local library.

If you want to begin your writing practice in this new year--I recommend starting here.

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.

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.

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

I have not survived against all odds.
I have not lived to tell.
I have not witnessed the extraordinary.
This is my story.

I found a pristine copy of this book at a used book fair about a year or two ago and eyed it on the pile for a long time.  Amy Krouse Rosenthal had an interesting idea:  write about your life as a series of entries in an encyclopedia, alphabetically.

I approached it warily, thinking it would be annoying and uninteresting, but I found quite the opposite.  Ms Rosenthal is funny and observant and has a unique sense style.  Parts made me laugh out loud; other parts were thoughtful and bittersweet.  An ordinary life can be interesting and even at times profound.

Also,  she poses some interesting interactions between writer and author via the website she sets up.  She simply asks you write her and let her know you read the book and she will thank you.  Since the book was published in 2005, she is not as fast about responding--not even sure she will respond.  I was hoping I would hear from her before I wrote this, but at press time, e-mail silence.

Still it is a nice idea, thanking your readers.

I found a lot of the entries would prompt my own writing.  What entries would I choose for my list of an ordinary life?  Would you?

We the Animals by Justin Torres

This lovely book--novella really--made a lot of must read lists for 2011.  I heard the author interviewed on NPR last fall and have been trying to get to it for awhile.

Three boys come of age in an abusive, slightly crazy household.  The boys have an unquestionable love and regard for each other even as they fight and endure abuse and begin to ask the questions all boys ask.

You should read this book because it is simply very very fine writing.  It is, in a nutshell, why we read: to discover lyrical passages, profound insights, concise metaphors, and description that can take your breath away.

You can read We the Animals in one sitting.  You may want to re-read it just to experience the imagery and story again. The second to the last story/chapter is guaranteed to make you want to pick up a pen and tell your own true story.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Just finished this incredible book which has already been made into a movie with Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock.  The movie is being mocked as too sappy, and it does indeed look like a real tear jerker, but I was drawn to the book and enjoyed this incredible post 9/11 tale of a boy who finds a key and goes in search of a lock.

The book was largely narrated by Oskar Schell, a young boy of about 10 or 12.  He reminded me of the boy in the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon.  Both boys had peculiar ways of looking at the world and both set out to solve a mystery that was surrounded by sadness and tragedy.  Those voices immediately draw you into the story, make you love them, empathize with them, root for them.

This book has a lot of fabulous and mysterious pictures that match the stories in the book.  Pictures that will make you flip through the pages and bring you new understanding to the narrative.   Foer has created several compelling voices that add to the various mysteries of the book, but ultimately, the best part about this story, is the fine fine writing.  Foer has an amazing imagination and pulls the reader right into this post 9/11 fable.  I gasped with delight in more than one place.  I can't wait to read more by him.

Rumors of Water

A friend wrote to ask if I had heard of or read this book.  I had not, but I loved the title, and it was a slim little volume that I had to order from a small press.  It felt like an important book to purchase: reading someone who did not have the backing of the large chains, but could come up with a title like this.

Each very short chapter was stories about her daughters who she has home educated.  She writes metaphorically of their unconventional approach to education and a way to approach writing.  It was sweet and simple and easy to read in an evening. I especially like her stories about Grandma and the recorder. Reminds me of why I write.

You probably won't find it at B & N or the library. Shout out if you would like to borrow it.

Thanks for the recommend my friend.

The value of paper and a pencil

About twice a month a few friends and I lead a writing circle for women at the Monroe County Jail.  We take lined composition books, pencils, some poetry, and for purposes of a small ritual we do before we start writing, we take a flower. I have been participating in this service to our community for about 5 years now.

Last week, the commander of the jail got angry because he discovered someone snuck in some contraband (rumor has it that it was a lighter), and so he banned everything from coming in--except of course employees and volunteers.  This meant we could hold the writing circle, but we could not bring in the tools that we needed to encourage women to write and tell their stories.  

My co-facilitator brought a sheet of paper with our agenda on it and a poem about hope that we wanted to read to the women.  The guard made us leave that behind.  We went up to the activity room, hands empty.  We did  discover a loop hole in the rule: the commander said that if we already had materials in the jail, we could use those.  When we arrived to conduct the circle, we found we did have some notebooks and at least 15 pencils.  In addition someone gave us a sheaf of lined notebook paper.  We still have kleenex and a little chime to ring and a small smooth stone to pass around the circle.  Our liaison at the jail allowed us to get on her computer in her office so we could find the poem to read aloud to the women. Getting ready for the circle felt a little like a game.

Our circle yesterday was fine and full. We spent 90 minutes writing about hope and that is no small thing for the 13 woman in our group who sometimes feel hopeless.  

As we wrapped up the circle, we asked them all to write for us, so that when we come back in two weeks, they'll have stories and poems to share.  Of course, We realized right away they will have a hard time doing that...they won't have any paper or pencils.  Normally, a writer in our circle would take a full 200 page composition book back to their cell, but if we want to come back again and this restriction has not been lifted, we would need to conserve what paper and pencil we had stored away for as long as we could.

We stared at the dwindling sheaf of paper and made a hasty decision to give each woman 2 or 3 sheets. We made her promise to write. "Use the margins if you have to," we said.   We collected the pencils as they filed out in hope that they could scrounge something to write with on the cell block.  If we let these precious few pencils go, we might not be able to have a writing circle.

Just as they were filing out, I spied a blue pencil box filled with the smallest of pencil stubs.  I opened it up and showed it to the women.  This is what hope looks like.

Hope

It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.

It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.

It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.

It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.

~ Lisel Mueller ~

Loud in the House of Myself by Stacy Pershall

You may know Stacy Pershall from her prior work, as she was an early internet sensation when she became one of those web cam girls who lived her daily life on-line.  She has written an interesting twist on the young woman/mental illness memoir in which the author recounts her years of struggling with both bi-polar disorder and undiagnosed borderline personality disorder. At the beginning of each chapter she recounts a story of how she got one of her multiple tattoos and what it means to her.  She reveals early on in her life chronicle that tattooing, getting to choose her own skin, seemed to be one of the only ways she could reclaim her sanity.  If you have ever stared at a woman who is covered with body tattoos and wondered how she could do that to her body, I think this might help shed some light on that phenomenon.

Stacy Pershall recounts her young life and her growth into a mature woman amidst the backdrop of self loathing so profound that it leads her to starve herself, treat the people who love her most very cruelly and eventually try to kill herself in a very public and humiliating way.  Her mental illness does finally lead her to work with psychiatrists and mental health professionals to get the drugs and behavior therapy that she most needs.  She writes about the life long and on-going struggle that she enters into daily.

I found Stacy's writing very tight and original.  I had sympathy for the character, and I enjoyed watching her struggle and gain footing as she escaped from her small town. I really cheered for her as she began to find her way at the end.  I like Stacy and found this to be a compelling personal narrative.

There is a thesis in here about how each of her mental illnesses is treated and one of them may be wrongly categorized, and one is also difficult to diagnose in the presence of the other.  The medical terminology lost me, but I have no doubt that others who find themselves dealing with these psychiatric problems will find her comparison and comments interesting.

The title drew me into the book originally.  If you enjoy memoir this is a fast and worthwhile read.

A major Award!

I am pleased to announce that I have won a MAJOR AWARD!  I came in third place in a local short story contest. It will be 6 months before my story appears in print, so I will wait till it comes out to post here and share the story and the publication.

Needless to say, I am very excited.  I won a small gift certificate to a local restaurant.  I plan to take out the lovely ladies who helped me workshop the story over several weeks.  I couldn't have done it without them.

Also, a big shout out to Women Writing for (a) Change-Bloomington which also creates the venue for me to tell stories and revel in a marvelous community of women writers.

I must tell you that I enjoy summer so much it is hard to get to the reading I want to do.  These posts may slow down a bit over the summer months.

Peace and hope you are enjoying some good reads!  Post and let me know what they are.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

Someone recommended this book on Facebook, and I went immediately to the library website to request it:  whoa, long waitlist, it must be good.  So after waiting a few months, I finally got my hands on this book, and it took me awhile to get through it.  While the characters were compelling and the situation interesting, the plot kind of dragged out and the whole thing felt sort of contrived in places.  In other words, I am not sure it lives up to its hype.

The story is rooted in Shakespeare (which my husband figured out from the title.  Brush up your Shakespeare for this read.)  and tells the story of three sisters and their lives after they return home to care for their ailing mother.  Sister Rose (Rosalind) is the responsible, motherly, accomplished never left home sister.  Sister Bianca has fled from their home and developed a nasty NY lifestyle of lies, stealing, and cheap one night stands. Cordelia just runs and keeps the life of a vagabond, not really caring much about anyone or anything.  One summer they all return home and begin to solve all of thier problems and heal their mother.

The one interesting twist on this novel was that it was told from a first person plural point of view.  All the sisters are apparently telling this story from the point of view as a single sisterly unit.  It was most unusual, and I have never read anything like this before.  It is probably the single facter that kept me reading until it finally turned into a page turner for me.

As a general rule if a book does not compel me to keep reading within the first 10-20 pages of the book, I don't usually continue.  The fact that I kept plowing through this, really says a lot for the hope I had that it would get better.

You will enjoy this if you know your Shakespeare and like a nice tidy ending for your fiction.  Also,  if you enjoy unique perspectives, this one is worthy of taking a look at.  We might be able to learn a thing or two about writing.  Maybe this was why there was such a long waitlist for it.

For those of you waiting,  I am returning it today.

Who is Professor X?

Professor X wrote this article for the Atlantic Monthly in 2008.  It caused a lot of controversy when it appeared.  He excoriates our culture for demanding that College be a prerequisite for most jobs, even those that do not seem to need such preparation.  From this article he wrote:  In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic.

It was hidden in a bottom shelf of a bookstore in the parenting section which was kind of odd, but of course I was attracted to it as I am part of the Ivory Tower and have learned to both love and hate it over the years.

This book is an interesting interplay of his own memoir, why he chose to adjunct and what it does for his finances and his marriage; a social critique of the culture that has elevated a college education way beyond it's possible worth, and a writing primer.

I have to say, that the combination really worked for me.  I was fairly convinced about his argument that we are unnecessarily pushing college at the expense of huge amounts of debt and frustration, his own story was sweet and well written and who can't use advice on writing, even if from an anonymous author.

Professor X chose to remain anonymous because he loves his job and doesn't want to lose it.  He no longer needs the money, his marriage is fine, but he truly enjoys teaching even if his students are woefully unprepared.

I would really like to write this man as I have a few critiques about some of his assumptions about college education.  The easy avenue of email probably won't be open to me.  I'll have to write his publisher.  I have a copy of it if anyone would like to borrow it.

A Very Personal Story

We're all pretty much able to deal even with the worst that life can fire at us, if we simply admit that it is very difficult.  I think that's the whole of the answer.  We make our way, and effort and time give us cushion and dignity. And as we age, we're riding higher in the saddle, seeing more terrain. 

So it's an epiphany after all.  You have it in your hand the whole time.

-- from Half a Life by Darin Strauss


This book has a plain dark cover with a gold embossed title on it.  The pages are made of thick paper.  It's heavier than regular books.  Its subject matter is very somber, and it is all very sad.  This book made a couple of must read lists from 2010, and I picked it up because every where I turned it seemed to be there. 


This personal story (what he calls it, instead of a memoir)  is about a  man who looks back to age 18 when he accidentally hit and killed a girl, one of his peers, on her bicycle.  This horrendous act haunts everything he does from that day forward until he has his own children and then he decides he must get help.  He both finds a decent therapist and embarks on a mission to write his story, to share what happened to him 18 years, half a life, before.

I found the writing to be simply magnificent.  I kept writing down sentences and phrases that seemed the very essence of what good writing is all about.  He definitely gets what it means to tell a tale, turn a phrase, describe a crisis, and capture what torment he had been through for all these years.  Forgiveness is nothing unless you can forgive yourself, it seems.

I highly recommend this readable, sad, cautionary tale as a decent lesson for anyone who has been haunted by a questionable action or wonders how to shake off the dead ghosts.  It is a truly remarkable sharing.

Please read this book and tell me what you think!

I just finished The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan and it was absolutely one of the most beautiful stories I have ever read/ideas I have even come across.  Mr. Levithan doesn't present a chronological picture of a relationship, rather he presents an alphabetical list of definitions as if from a  dictionary.  Each word and idea is written like a short prose poem and all add up to create this marvelous kaleidoscope of a story about two people in love. 

It reads as a kind of puzzle, and I guarantee you will fall in love with this couple and want them to stay together.  She: wild and crazy and fun. He: stable, down to earth, and pragmatic.  They fight and split over an affair?  Or do they stay together?   IS she an alcoholic?  Pregnant?  Does he stay or does he go?  Please read this and let me know what you think.  I guarantee it is an absolutely a breathtaking look at love and a perfectly fascinating relationship especially with the patchwork observations.

Here is one of my many favorites:

Juxtaposition, n.

It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I can't even make the comparisons anymore, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph.  It seems foolish to play games of better and worse.  It is simply a matter of is and is no longer.

I have been interested for some time in interesting ways to organize thought and writing that are beyond the usual first to last chronology. This is a brilliant example of of a non-linear story.  If you read it let me know what you think.  Please.

When Katie Wakes by Connie May Fowler

This book (a memoir) was a Christmas gift from my in-laws who saw Connie May Fowler speak and stopped to get a signed copy for me.  The lovely autograph and well wishes make the book all the more special.   I began reading it right away and was immediately drawn in.  Fowler is a superb writer and has a knack for  creating suspense.  I especially loved how she used present tense and second person to create this voice that put me right in the middle of every scene.

Since the book is a memoir and by the pictures on the cover we know that the writer is fine and happy, we guess that this memoir, as terrible and grim as it gets must have a happy ending.  The suspense becomes how will she finally develop some self esteem and extricate herself from this horrible abusive relationship? How will she transform herself into the writer that she is today?   I loved reading her story and understanding how it happened. She painted the picture so vividly and perfectly that I can hear the surf on the beach in Florida and smell the exhaust from the Audi as it drives away.  I cry over her inability to leave and get help and rejoice when she finally does.  Painful but uplifting. Certainly hard to read, but such a great voice and beautiful story that it was worth it.

Ms Fowler's book Before Women had Wings was chosen as an Oprah selection a few years ago and from the acknowledgements in Fowler's memoir it seems Oprah may have had some influence over her writing this memoir.  Oprah has a knack for spotting talent.  

I am going to find Before Women had Wings which I am pretty sure I own but never read before.  Watch for a review.

Motherland by Fern Schumer Chapman

At it's heart, this book by a Holocaust survivor's daughter, is a love letter from daughter to mother.  In 1990 Fern and her mother Edith, make a trip back to Edith's hometown in Germany.  The time has come for Edith to visit the past from which she was cut off 50 years before when her Jewish parents sent her to live with relatives in Chicago. The horrors being heaped upon Jewish citizens were growing every day.

The bulk of this memoir is the story of this trip and the memories that Edith relives by setting foot in her village.  This book is a powerful testament to memory and how we care for and shape our memories as we age.  Edith visits her family home and picks up dirt off the basement floor as she is overcome with thoughts of her past.  She visits an odd museum where she swears she sees some of her family's possessions including her school satchel.  These scenes filled me with sadness for Edith, long parted from her family.

Daughter Fern spent her life never really knowing her mother Edith.  Edith could never share with Fern her sorrows and her regrets. Fern never knew any of her mother's childhood or memories of life in Germany.

So there they were togther, building bonds about the past. Edith and Fern learned about all that had happened to Edith's parents after she was shipped from Germany to the USA.  Everything they see and do in Germany feels meaningful and filled with great sorrow.  Toward the end of their trip they hear a confession of a man who treated her family poorly. They meet an old family friend who was filled with vitriol and unhappiness of the time during the war.  Where Edith had shut off the past totally, Mina had lived in the past constantly.  The contrast between the two old friends couldn't have been more stark. 

I loved this story.  Every situation pulsed with meaning and reader's will have a richer understanding of the role that memories can play in all our lives.  It felt like Fern and Edith were solving a real life mystery that involved cemeteries and old photographs and haunting times.  Without spoiling too much, as a reader will want to let this interesting trip unfold to them without knowing much in advance, there is a conversation between Fern and her mother on the last night of the trip which changes the way Fern sees her mother after all these years.  It involves Edith's description of being placed on the boat to America and saying good-bye to her parents forvever. It broke my heart.

The writing was excellent and the story sweet and sad. I highly recommend it.

Fat Girl by Judith Moore

"Even sad stories are company.  And perhaps that's why one might read such a chronicle, to look into a companionable darkness that isn't yours."    --Mark Doty, Firebird.

It took me less that 24 hours to read this tragic coming-of-age tale.  Fat Girl is by far one of the most well written contemporary memoirs I have come across in these past few years.  The writing is immediate and very very raw; it will tear your heart out as it draws you in. 

Judith Moore's ability to weave a rich haunting tale about her girlhood in a loveless home leaves me wanting so much more from this writer.  She uses every sense to evoke the feeling and the anguish of the girl at the center of the story.  I tasted food and felt repulsion at smells and empathized in every way with this honest account of growing up and being fat.  I could not put this down. I simply loved this story she wrote. 

This is not a happy story.  The writer warns the reader at the start that there will be no happy endings.  She gets no repreive, no prince in a white horse comes riding in, she doesn't magically loose a lot of weight.  But the truth is, in spite of the tragedy of this young girl's life, you know that the very act of writing this has brought the author to truth and healing.  Writing can cure our deepest wounds and somehow nurture us in a way that no one else can. 

In fact, Moore concludes with this:  I never turned suicidal, and I never jumped up happy.  As I recounted those boys in my second grade class or my terror on weigh-in days or the beatings with the belt when my mother hissed, "I'm going to cut the blood out of you," I felt relief.  Among reasons people keep sad stories to themselves is that they do not want anyone to feel sorry for them.  I don't, I don't want you to feel sorry for me.  I do not feel sorry for myself. I am what I am.  I am glad I wrote this, and I am grateful--very grateful--that you kept me company while I did. 

This book--and anything by Judith Moore--gets five stars.  Read this to learn about memoir and really amazing, immediate writing.

JD Salinger 1919-2010*

I never really understood what was so great about JD Salinger's fiction. When I was a teen in the early 80's all the conventional wisdom pointed right at Catcher in the Rye. Groundbreaking! Shocking! Revolutionary! I picked it up at the library and read it quickly and prepared to be blown away. I was pretty disapointed.

"What's the big deal?" I thought. It probably was pretty revolutionary in 1951 when it was published, but I had already read the complete cannon of Judy Blume in which she writes quite frankly about all kinds of maturation issues and sexually explicit coming of age situations. I gobbled up Go Ask Alice an anonymous diary of a drug addicted teen. Holden Caulfield could hardly hold a candle to any of the heroines in my teen library.

In looking back, I realize that Holden Caulfield is a decidedly male protagonist with a male point of view written by a very male author. Most women comment that they did not particularly care for Catcher in the Rye either. I could not relate especially when I was 15.

What fascinated me about this book is the story of the author, JD Salinger. He hated publicity and after making it big with Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey (which I couldn't get into either.) he disappeared and became something of a recluse. After a story in the New Yorker in 1965, he never published again. Who was this enigmatic man and why did he choose a life of seclusion?

His recent death and NY times obituary made mention of two memoirs published by two different women in his life. Joyce Maynard, writer and novelist, quit college at Yale and moved in with him at age 18 (while he was 53!). The affair lasted a mere 10 months and took Ms. Maynard 20 years from which to recover. She apparently saw the light and published At Home in the World which is her memoir of growing up in a dysfunctional family which led her to form a relationship with this unusual and controlling man.

Maragaret "Peggy" Salinger, his daughter, published her own memoir shortly after Ms. Maynard's hit the bookshelves. Peggy's coming of age saga Dreamcatcher was less focused on JD Salinger, but he haunted the background of her story throughout. Obviously Peggy has a much different perspective on her father and their relationship than Joyce, but the two women's stories are not incompatible and together make for a fascinating study of an eccentric man and a gifted writer.

At Home in the World is the more interesting of the two memoirs. Ms. Maynard is clearly a professional writer and knows how to tell a story and tells it well. I was fairly mesmerized by her and her life through the whole thing. Her JD was controlling and manipulative, but she was also quite stunted and ready to be controlled. It took her many years to recover. I think the most striking aspect of this story was Ms Maynard's own rise to fame as a reporter, writer and novelist. She lives the life I would love to live. She clearly has a gift, but no where in the book does she discuss a love of words and writing. For her it is always something of a burden or a chore. She can write, she is prompted and encouraged to write at a very young age (think stage parents for budding writers) and thus her career rises around her with some fanfare, but with no joy. I never felt like this path to the writing life was one I would ever take. Writing became simply her career and a means to an end. I doubt if the muse ever visited her. I learned a lot about writing and life simply from watching her live this forced march to writing fame.

Ms Salinger is clearly not the writer. She is compelled to tell her story in the same way Ms Maynard was but her story is awkward and changes styles frequently throughout. It fluctuated between an academic essay of her father's writing and how it parallels his life, and her own diary entries and letters. The first 100 pages or so were an explication of her father before she knew him: how the war and virulent anti-semitism must have shaped him. This part of the book will be especially appealing to you if you are familiar with his stories and novels, especially his early ones.

The next 200 or so pages are a blow by blow of all the steps and mis steps she took as a small child growing up in a recluse's home and the effects it had on her. The last 100 pages are how she got to where she is now. While her version has some merit, it is the most interesting when it intersects with Joyce's story. Somehow the two of them together can weave the tale of the enigmatic and troubled man.

For some reason critics have really bashed Joyce Maynard's memoir, accusing her of trying to cash in. In my opinion, so what? She has a tale to tell and she knows how to tell it. If that bothered JD Salinger maybe he needed to try a bit harder at being a recluse. Both these women have created timely narratives that should shed some light on Mr. Salinger and his life and work and also might teach a thing or two about writing memories.

*The editor is well aware that it is Women's History month and writing about JD Salinger is not exactly in keeping with the theme of the month. However, I do not particularly believe in marginalizing the history of women. It should be taught every month...just as African American History should be taught every month. So, given that JD Salinger is on my mind--he gets the first blog post of the month.