June 2011 Archives
Happy to Share
Readers! I'm happy to share the good news that Between Song and Story: Essays for the Twenty-first Century is now available. The collection, edited by Sheryl St. Germain and Margaret Whitford, "celebrates the contemporary essay's capacity to live between the two worlds of lyric and narrative" and "exemplifies the diverse, exuberant, and intrepid forms" that essays take now.
I'm thrilled that my piece "Grip" is included among work by writers I wildly admire: Dorothy Allison, Tom Bissell, Linda Hogan, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Jamaica Kincaid, Naomi Shihab Nye, John T. Price, John Edgar Wideman, and scads more. Joyce Carol Oates. Phillip Lopate. Debra Marquart, Dinty Moore, Michele Morano--stop me. It's just a super-awesome lineup, and I can't wait to dig in.
The editors have offered alternative tables of contents, too, by theme (travel, race & ethnicity, nature, war, etc.) and also by form, so it seems like it would be a great anthology for teaching. Hmmm . . . To read more about the book, you can go here.
Many thanks and congratulations to editors Sheryl and Margaret! ¡Felicidades!
I'm thrilled that my piece "Grip" is included among work by writers I wildly admire: Dorothy Allison, Tom Bissell, Linda Hogan, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Jamaica Kincaid, Naomi Shihab Nye, John T. Price, John Edgar Wideman, and scads more. Joyce Carol Oates. Phillip Lopate. Debra Marquart, Dinty Moore, Michele Morano--stop me. It's just a super-awesome lineup, and I can't wait to dig in.
The editors have offered alternative tables of contents, too, by theme (travel, race & ethnicity, nature, war, etc.) and also by form, so it seems like it would be a great anthology for teaching. Hmmm . . . To read more about the book, you can go here.
Many thanks and congratulations to editors Sheryl and Margaret! ¡Felicidades!
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In Memoriam
One of my dearest, greatest, sweetest fans has passed away. My father-in-law, R. Douglas MacDougall, has died, and I'm heading down with Grey to Louisiana for the services. The Handsome Husband is already there.
Douglas was already almost 70 when I met him two decades ago, and he was a voracious reader of literary work and a lively, engaged commentator on current events. After growing up in North Dakota, the descendant of Norwegian and Scottish immigrants, he worked as a journalist, served in the Navy in World War II, studied geology at the University of Montana, and helped to map the oil deposits in Saudi Arabia in the 1950s. (Little did he anticipate where our dependence on oil would lead.) He met the lovely Ingrid in Berlin, and they married and moved to D.C., where their two sons were born, and finally to the greater New Orleans area.
Douglas was always extraordinarily kind to and interested in Grey and me, even though most parents probably don't hope their sons will fall for a single mother with a child in tow. Douglas also took a particular interest in my work, and he kept a shelf full of everything I published. He read it all, and he often had shrewd or generous comments to offer.
I was always so touched by his sincere interest in my writing. Douglas was a great fan of THE DESIRE PROJECTS (now known as HELL OR HIGH WATER) and was pleased by the fact that its protagonist is a reporter, as he had been.
Our admiration was mutual. I liked his enthusiasm for language, his devotion to precision, and his faithfulness to his family. I admired his long, storied life. He was an absolutely devoted grandparent, and to see him with children was a joy. He loved animals, and he was known for his careful budgeting. (He liked being called Frugal MacDougall.) I even liked his occasional grumpiness. It made me smile. And the two sons he raised are fantastic men: generous, kind, smart, fair, gentle, and engaged with the world around them.
So we're off to pay tribute to a long, generous, and fruitful life. Rest in peace, Douglas. You were good to me.
Douglas was already almost 70 when I met him two decades ago, and he was a voracious reader of literary work and a lively, engaged commentator on current events. After growing up in North Dakota, the descendant of Norwegian and Scottish immigrants, he worked as a journalist, served in the Navy in World War II, studied geology at the University of Montana, and helped to map the oil deposits in Saudi Arabia in the 1950s. (Little did he anticipate where our dependence on oil would lead.) He met the lovely Ingrid in Berlin, and they married and moved to D.C., where their two sons were born, and finally to the greater New Orleans area.
Douglas was always extraordinarily kind to and interested in Grey and me, even though most parents probably don't hope their sons will fall for a single mother with a child in tow. Douglas also took a particular interest in my work, and he kept a shelf full of everything I published. He read it all, and he often had shrewd or generous comments to offer.
I was always so touched by his sincere interest in my writing. Douglas was a great fan of THE DESIRE PROJECTS (now known as HELL OR HIGH WATER) and was pleased by the fact that its protagonist is a reporter, as he had been.
Our admiration was mutual. I liked his enthusiasm for language, his devotion to precision, and his faithfulness to his family. I admired his long, storied life. He was an absolutely devoted grandparent, and to see him with children was a joy. He loved animals, and he was known for his careful budgeting. (He liked being called Frugal MacDougall.) I even liked his occasional grumpiness. It made me smile. And the two sons he raised are fantastic men: generous, kind, smart, fair, gentle, and engaged with the world around them.
So we're off to pay tribute to a long, generous, and fruitful life. Rest in peace, Douglas. You were good to me.
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Hell or High Water
So my reading is at Crescent Moon tonight, but my mind's on other things--namely, the title change of THE DESIRE PROJECTS and the fact that three big-dealio writers are reading it right now in order to provide blurbs.
Which makes me panic if I think about it. So I'm not thinking about it. Not, not, not.
The writers who've generously agreed to read it are doing so quickly, prior to the July in-house meeting that the editor will have with marketing and publicity, etc. The goal of having these blurbs in hand is to gin up excitement among the St. Martin's publicity team for what is (let's be frank) a new book by a writer with no platform or name-recognition in the genre. A completely unknown quantity. Since big publishers bring out hundreds of titles a season, why would the publicity and marketing folks get excited about an unknown? Hence these blurbs.
I know that the manuscripts were delivered last week (hand-delivered by a courier in a Town Car, according to one account--muy la di da). I know that the title is likely to be (brace yourself) HELL OR HIGH WATER, in order to signal to readers who regularly buy mysteries/thrillers that this is a book they're likely to enjoy, since--again--my name will mean nothing to them.
I know that this nervewracking stuff is part of the process.
Gentle reader, I heaved many a sigh over the title change. I've been living with the manuscript as THE DESIRE PROJECTS for over four years now, and it was, in my humble opinion, a damn near perfect title for the story. (The fictional protagonist grew up in the real-life Desire Projects of New Orleans, and everyone in the novel is driven by some intense desire, forbidden or otherwise. Also, it had a kind of Buddhist spin, in that the crimes of the novel all stem from desire, which I liked.) I loved it. It made me feel clever and literary.
But my editor wasn't the first to balk at it, and I was prepared (by the woeful tales of my writer-friends who've had their titles changed by publishers--a larger club than you'd like to imagine) to be flexible.
Still.
I do like it well enough--and it was certainly better than any of the other dozens of titles that my agent, editor, and I were shooting back and forth to each other for a couple of weeks. I will not even humiliate my poor book by including them here. Even my own suggestions were quite dreadful. It's like trying to rename your child after four years of living with her as Jessica: She's Jessica. She just is.
Okay, so it's not quite like that. But you get the gist.
I like HELL OR HIGH WATER (my editor's suggestion; bless her) because it conveys the hell-or-high-water determination of the protagonist, Nola, to get her story (she's a journalist) and get her man, and because it resonates with the difficulties that New Orleans has experienced. It takes a common, familiar expression, Come hell or high water, and tweaks it slightly (by omitting the come), so a reader encountering it will feel recognition but with a little twist.
I also think that HELL OR HIGH WATER--once it's been formatted in those sans-serif all-caps in red or black or silver that seem to grace the covers of most suspense novels--will scream thriller to the unsuspecting bookstore browser, which is, according to my editor, its primary job.
And what the title THE DESIRE PROJECTS failed to do. Alas. Wistful sigh.
So I'm reading like a maniac to keep my mind off it all (Hammett's The Thin Man, The Three Weissmanns of Westport, and Al Gore's Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis).
Also diverting is the process of working like a maniac on FAMILY TROUBLE, the collection of essays by memoirists about how they've negotiated the tricky issue of writing about their family members.
The essays are so excellent! Each one has a unique story to share and helpful strategies to suggest. The writers are stellar. It's a joy to work on these pieces, and my research assistant Sindu is great. With her help, my goal is to put this project to bed by August 15. Come hell or high water.
Which makes me panic if I think about it. So I'm not thinking about it. Not, not, not.
The writers who've generously agreed to read it are doing so quickly, prior to the July in-house meeting that the editor will have with marketing and publicity, etc. The goal of having these blurbs in hand is to gin up excitement among the St. Martin's publicity team for what is (let's be frank) a new book by a writer with no platform or name-recognition in the genre. A completely unknown quantity. Since big publishers bring out hundreds of titles a season, why would the publicity and marketing folks get excited about an unknown? Hence these blurbs.
I know that the manuscripts were delivered last week (hand-delivered by a courier in a Town Car, according to one account--muy la di da). I know that the title is likely to be (brace yourself) HELL OR HIGH WATER, in order to signal to readers who regularly buy mysteries/thrillers that this is a book they're likely to enjoy, since--again--my name will mean nothing to them.
I know that this nervewracking stuff is part of the process.
Gentle reader, I heaved many a sigh over the title change. I've been living with the manuscript as THE DESIRE PROJECTS for over four years now, and it was, in my humble opinion, a damn near perfect title for the story. (The fictional protagonist grew up in the real-life Desire Projects of New Orleans, and everyone in the novel is driven by some intense desire, forbidden or otherwise. Also, it had a kind of Buddhist spin, in that the crimes of the novel all stem from desire, which I liked.) I loved it. It made me feel clever and literary.
But my editor wasn't the first to balk at it, and I was prepared (by the woeful tales of my writer-friends who've had their titles changed by publishers--a larger club than you'd like to imagine) to be flexible.
Still.
I do like it well enough--and it was certainly better than any of the other dozens of titles that my agent, editor, and I were shooting back and forth to each other for a couple of weeks. I will not even humiliate my poor book by including them here. Even my own suggestions were quite dreadful. It's like trying to rename your child after four years of living with her as Jessica: She's Jessica. She just is.
Okay, so it's not quite like that. But you get the gist.
I like HELL OR HIGH WATER (my editor's suggestion; bless her) because it conveys the hell-or-high-water determination of the protagonist, Nola, to get her story (she's a journalist) and get her man, and because it resonates with the difficulties that New Orleans has experienced. It takes a common, familiar expression, Come hell or high water, and tweaks it slightly (by omitting the come), so a reader encountering it will feel recognition but with a little twist.
I also think that HELL OR HIGH WATER--once it's been formatted in those sans-serif all-caps in red or black or silver that seem to grace the covers of most suspense novels--will scream thriller to the unsuspecting bookstore browser, which is, according to my editor, its primary job.
And what the title THE DESIRE PROJECTS failed to do. Alas. Wistful sigh.
So I'm reading like a maniac to keep my mind off it all (Hammett's The Thin Man, The Three Weissmanns of Westport, and Al Gore's Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis).
Also diverting is the process of working like a maniac on FAMILY TROUBLE, the collection of essays by memoirists about how they've negotiated the tricky issue of writing about their family members.
The essays are so excellent! Each one has a unique story to share and helpful strategies to suggest. The writers are stellar. It's a joy to work on these pieces, and my research assistant Sindu is great. With her help, my goal is to put this project to bed by August 15. Come hell or high water.
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This Monday, June 13th
So I'm seeing Silver Sparrow everywhere: in my local bookstore, on the cover of Indie Bound, in this month's Vogue (the one with the beautiful Penélope Cruz on the cover) . . . . Wow! Tayari's book is approaching total media saturation! It's amazing and fantastic. More power to her.
This Monday, three cool events are going on in Lincoln, so if you're local, read on.
At 7 p.m. at Crescent Moon Coffee on P Street, I'm doing a reading with my friend and colleague, poet Grace Bauer, and one other writer. (Crescent Moon, in case you didn't know, is one of the rare places in Lincoln where you can get coffee or wine. Kind of nice.) I'll be reading pieces from my forthcoming memoir collection, ISLAND OF BONES.
Alas, a really cool publishing panel, courtesy of the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference, is going on at the same time:
I wish I could go. Many thanks to novelist and conference director Timothy Schaffert (whose own book is enjoying some media saturation of its own) for the heads-up.
And for those of you who've just had it with things literary, and prefer something more literally intoxicating, there's this:
This Monday, three cool events are going on in Lincoln, so if you're local, read on.
At 7 p.m. at Crescent Moon Coffee on P Street, I'm doing a reading with my friend and colleague, poet Grace Bauer, and one other writer. (Crescent Moon, in case you didn't know, is one of the rare places in Lincoln where you can get coffee or wine. Kind of nice.) I'll be reading pieces from my forthcoming memoir collection, ISLAND OF BONES.
Alas, a really cool publishing panel, courtesy of the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference, is going on at the same time:
Panel discussion on contemporary publishing concerns
7:30-8:30 p.m.
UNL City Union, Auditorium
I wish I could go. Many thanks to novelist and conference director Timothy Schaffert (whose own book is enjoying some media saturation of its own) for the heads-up.
And for those of you who've just had it with things literary, and prefer something more literally intoxicating, there's this:
Thanks to Alexis, who writes the blog The Bottle Chronicles, for the invite!Ferm. Base (Intro. to Fermentation)
6:30-8:00 p.m.
Indigo Bridge Books
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Gorgeous
I just finished Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones.
Reader, I loved it. It was wonderful. The writing's lovely, the story's compelling--and the voice! So intimate, so true. I love the way she captures the small, real details of girlhood, of desire (wow! that grocery-store scene!), and of despair. The complexity and ethical ambiguity of the story are also richly rewarding. It draws no easy conclusions.
I've admired Tayari's experimentation with structure and narrative point-of-view since her first novel, Leaving Atlanta, and she continues that exploration here to fine effect. Also lovely are her subtle homages to African American women's literary traditions, such as the graceful integration of phrases like Morrison's "Quiet as it's kept" and Hurston's "cracked plate."
Silver Sparrow is a book to read and reread, to savor, to share, and to keep.
Reader, I loved it. It was wonderful. The writing's lovely, the story's compelling--and the voice! So intimate, so true. I love the way she captures the small, real details of girlhood, of desire (wow! that grocery-store scene!), and of despair. The complexity and ethical ambiguity of the story are also richly rewarding. It draws no easy conclusions.
I've admired Tayari's experimentation with structure and narrative point-of-view since her first novel, Leaving Atlanta, and she continues that exploration here to fine effect. Also lovely are her subtle homages to African American women's literary traditions, such as the graceful integration of phrases like Morrison's "Quiet as it's kept" and Hurston's "cracked plate."
Silver Sparrow is a book to read and reread, to savor, to share, and to keep.
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