Walking Away

Writing is hard.

And there are days when it seems pointless. The amount of time and energy I am spending on character, dialogue and scene setting when I could be walking the dog, who cares nothing about character, dialogue and scene setting, in the park.

Mad Men’s Don Draper stares at the sky on a rare moment off at a picnic with his family. “This is the only thing I want to be doing,” he says. At another point he states, “I want to live. Not just talk about it.”

Recently I’ve been working on the art of walking away. From writing. Allowing the frustration to simply be and to not continue grinding my gears. I do some laundry, wash the dishes, grateful for the simple responsibility of not having to think about character, dialogue and scene setting.

But I’m a writer. I got myself into this mess. Why not just drop it?

Because, as my good friend Kate, another writer, recently said, “Every time I walk away from creative writing, I’m sorry I did it.” I don’t want to be sorry. And, inadvertently, I’ll just start again anyway. That’s what happened the last time I walked away.

What’s different now?

First, I’ve been able to identify cynicism and negativity as exhaustion. Often the mornings I feel this way come after a night of interrupted or diminished sleep.

Second, I’ve learned to let go. The Buddhists speak of attachment, and there is no question that I am attached to my writing practice. So many needs are met by writing but writing can, especially when I’m tired, exhaust me and make me feel worse about the process. Letting go is my way of giving myself permission to rest and recover.

Third, walking away gives me perspective. Watching the dog, hearing my footsteps, listening to birds, reminds me that there is a whole world out there, completely removed from character, dialogue and scene setting. And sometimes, while not thinking about writing, I even come up with an idea that just might work.

As long as I simply walk away.

Mourning Ms. Morrison

As we pay tribute to Toni Morrison, it is so clarifying to understand the position she held as a working writer:

“I have an ideal writing routine that I’ve never experienced, which is to have, say, nine uninterrupted days when I wouldn’t have to leave the house or take phone calls. And to have the space—a space where I have huge tables. I end up with this much space [she indicates a small square spot on her desk] everywhere I am, and I can’t beat my way out of it. I am reminded of that tiny desk that Emily Dickinson wrote on and I chuckle when I think, Sweet thing, there she was. But that is all any of us have: just this small space and no matter what the filing system or how often you clear it out—life, documents, letters, requests, invitations, invoices just keep going back in. I am not able to write regularly. I have never been able to do that—mostly because I have always had a nine-to-five job. I had to write either in between those hours, hurriedly, or spend a lot of weekend and predawn time. . . .

I’ve tried to overcome not having orderly spaces by substituting compulsion for discipline, so that when something is urgently there, urgently seen or understood, or the metaphor was powerful enough, then I would move everything aside and write for sustained periods of time.”

–from a 1993 interview with Elissa Schappell in The Paris Review

I’m reminded of another writer, Gustave Flaubert, whose organizational credo I live by, daily, otherwise not one word would get written:

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

Thanks so much to Sherri Machlin, at the New York Public Library, for this great link to a selection of Toni Morrison’s quotes on her writing process.

https://lithub.com/you-dont-know-anything-and-other-writing-advice-from-toni-morrison/

Thunder Road Revisited

“The screen door slams
Mary’s dress sways”

I have been listening to the harmonica-and-piano infused introduction to Thunder Road my whole life and it wasn’t until last week that I discovered “Mary’s dress sways.” All these years…I thought her dress “waves.”

It took reading Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen’s eminently entertaining 2016 autobiography, for me to be reminded about what all his fans know: he is the consummate storyteller. He is also a man who seems to have taken Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style (“A sentence should contain no unnecessary words”) on as his bible.

“The screen door slams
Mary’s dress sways”

In these seven words we have a setting. There is no question of what is going on. It is told in such an elegant, pared-down style that we immediately know we are in the presence of a gifted writer.

“The car door slammed
It was a hard day at work”

I recently heard these lyrics on a country tune at a drug store. I immediately thought of Springsteen. This is not good writing; it is not interesting and does not capture the imagination of the reader.

And what a setting…

“Like a vision

she dances across the porch

As the radio plays

Roy Orbison sings for the lonely…”

One of the most eye-opening aspects of Springsteen’s own story is his moment of reckoning: when he has to decide, as a young artist, what will set him apart from the rock ’n’ roll market, already overwhelmed with great singers and instrumentalists.

“I needed to travel light and be able to blow somebody away with just my voice, my guitar and my song. Voice...guitar...song...three tools. My voice was never going to win any prizes. My guitar accompaniment on acoustic was rudimentary, so that left the songs. The songs would have to be fireworks. I decided the world was filled with plenty of good guitar players, many of them my match or better, but how many good songwriters were there? Songwriters with their own voice, their own story to tell, who could draw you into a world they created and sustain your interest in the things that obsessed them. Not many, a handful at best.”

And not only that; it is his ability to analyze his gift to the early ‘70s music scene -- wholly his own -- and the fact that, no matter how many early experiences of failure he suffers, he only has to fall back on himself, a hard-working Jersey musician who can blow the house away. He likes who he is and doesn’t have to run away from him.

“To give you an idea about how much the music business has changed, John Hammond, a historical figure in the industry” [producer of Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Billie Holiday] “was receiving complete no-names like us off the streets of New York in his office!”…“I would’ve been in a state of complete panic except on the way up in the elevator I’d performed a little mental jujitsu on myself. I thought, ‘I’ve got nothing so I’ve got nothing to lose. I can only gain should this work out. If it don’t, I still got what I came in with. I’m a free agent. I make my way through the world as myself and I’ll still be the same person when I leave no matter the outcome.”

That takes courage.

And for sheer tragicomic effect there is nothing like the contract-signing scene…

“I’d lived off the grid for so long. I was totally ignorant of the way of the law, musical or any other kind. I knew no lawyers; I’d been paid only in cash my entire life and had never paid a cent of income tax, signed an apartment lease nor filled out any form that might bind me in any way. I had no credit card, no checkbook, just what was jangling in my pocket…frightened, slowly, reluctantly, recklessly, contract by contract, I signed, finishing the last one, one evening, on a car hood in a New York City parking lot.”

Or the penny scene…

In the days before students were practically handed credit cards, Springsteen lived on cash. And pennies. Literally. Which caused problems when he, desperate for grocery money, drove into the city to borrow $35 from his manager. At the Lincoln Tunnel, the “No Pennies” sign would turn out to be his nemesis. 

However, ultimately, he emerges triumphant; after years of legal negotiations with a manager who bought the rights to all his work when he was young and very naive, he wins it all back…

“I’m one of the few artists from those days who owns everything he ever created. All my records are mine. All my songs are mine. It’s rare and it’s a good feeling.”

Amen, brother.

Mid Year, New Books

Summer is almost here and the beach is calling. I am happy to report that I am making my way through my new year’s book list.

Fashion Climbing — Bill Cunningham. I started with this outlandish memoir and could not be more thankful for Cunningham’s injection of creativity into 2019. 1950s hat maker extraordinaire, Cunningham had a gift few possess: he knew who he was from a young age. To say he was daring doesn’t do him justice; he was loyal to his imagination and he never gave up. Fashion Climbing is also a love letter to a long gone New York, where you could barter cleaning services for a floor of a brownstone in the 50s. Nothing matches the scene where Cunningham, preparing for a hat showing and running out of space, hangs furniture from clothesline out the back window.

Becoming — Michelle Obama. There are no words to describe the power of this book. It should, simply put, be required reading for everyone. Obama, in a natural voice that makes you feel she is in the room, tells her story with honesty and humor. Unlike Cunningham, Obama did things the way they were supposed to be done; she worked hard as a student, went to college, then law school. One day, she realized she was a “box checker” and, having ticked off each one on her list, did not like practicing law. Now what? This is where the journey becomes the ultimate challenge, because Obama has to find out who she really is, and, not surprisingly, there is no box to check off in this category.

Yorkville Twins — Joseph and John Gindele. This marvelous memoir is a testament to the power of self publishing. The Gindeles grew up in the tenements of Yorkville, my childhood home, and decided to listen to friends and relatives who insisted they write a book. I found it by accident, while doing research on my Yorkville novella. It could not be more delightful, filled with stories of a vibrant ethnic enclave that is no more.

Phryne and Jack

“One night I was sitting around watching The Thin Man on TV,” begins a monologue on Myrna Loy. Although I wish I had written this line, this could be true of me on any given night.

Myrna Loy, the smart and stunning actress of the 1930s, got to shine as Nora, to William Powell’s Nick, in The Thin Man Series, based on Dashiell Hammett’s eponymous murder mystery. Although made into a film series (Hammett only wrote one Thin Man novel), starring the successful Loy/Powell brand, the first two, for my money, are the most superior, with sumptuous sets, killer costumes and an etched-in-memory cast of character actors. A young James Stewart even appears in The Thin Man Returns as a man-about-town in 1930s San Francisco.

In the monologue, written by the late humorist Cynthia Heimel, Loy is lionized as the perfect role model for yearning young women trying to figure out the dating scene of the 1980s and ‘90s: “When in doubt,” Heimel writes, “act like Myrna Loy!”

Loy, in Heimel’s mind, is the cinema’s response to the 1920s flapper, a young woman who called her own shots. “Consider Myrna in the movies,” Heimel writes. “A real pip. Witty, self-possessed, adventuresome, wore great hats. This is good stuff.”

There was a time when you could easily fall into the “they-don’t-make-‘em-like-that- anymore” lament of our parents. Then came the new television. And with it arrived Phryne Fisher, lately of Melbourne, Australia.

“The voltage of that unresolved relationship” said author Kerry Greenwood “I don’t remember writing it that well.” She was speaking of the making of Miss Fisher (of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries) for television and Phryne’s relationship with Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, who, like Nick, in The Thin Man, initially sees a female as simply getting in his way, when trying to solve a murder. But Miss Fisher is no ditsy dame, she is accomplished, intelligent, and multi-lingual. Indeed, Jack not only comes to rely on her; he falls hard for her, as well.

What The Thin Man, and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries share in common is a celebration of the male-female couple as one, working together towards a common goal, in this case solving crimes. While, initially, there is certainly a sense of the male trying to assert his power by getting rid of the “little lady,” what elevates this genre is the emerging realization that the female is equal to him in talent and ability. And then there is the essential 1930s staple, snappy dialogue and witty repartee:

“One night I was sitting around, watching The Thin Man on TV, and William Powell had just put Myrna Loy into a cab. She thought he was getting in beside her and they were going to catch a murderer but instead he told the cab to take her to Grant’s Tomb and the cab sped away, containing an astonished Myrna. When her darling husband later asked her how she liked Grant’s Tomb…she just said, nice as you please, “It was lovely. I’m having a copy made for you.”

The Miss Fisher writing and production team knocked it out of the park with the series; can’t wait to see what happens with Phryne and Jack in Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears, the feature film, coming out later this year.

https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/2/12/18221978/miss-fishers-murder-mysteries-movie-crypt-of-tears-acorn-tv

 

 

 

 

Young Writer's Conference 2019

Such a delightful group of students at my workshop, What’s Your Point? (Of View, That Is) at the Young Writer’s Conference (Ridgefield, CT) this year.

What’s “first person?” “Third person?” and the not-so-popular “second person” point of view? We also talked about writing as an animal, or an object, like a refrigerator (the kids LOVED that!)

It’s always fun to shake things up and show students how far a little imagination can go…

Shining a Light on Students’ Critical Thinking, Artistic Intelligence, and Passion through Movement at 40th Annual Dance Concert

“Dance desires to be shared,” says Middle/Upper School Dance teacher Jesse Phillips-Fein. “It does not easily succumb to the rubric of ownership.”

Indeed, 65 students in grades 7-12 share the stage as they reach, leap, circle and hold hands in the 40th annual dance concert. The theme of the production is DANCE AND/AS PROPERTY and it features works by student choreographers (including those in IB Dance), as well as guest artists Orlando Hunter (Brother(hood) Dance); Parul Shah (Parul Shah Dance Company); and faculty members Jamara Hill (’10) and Jesse Phillips-Fein (’97).

How does dance become property? This theme, says Jesse, “really came out of conversations that emerged in last year’s dance concert…students were questioning, “Should people who don’t share a specific cultural identity perform a dance from that culture?”

In dance class and rehearsal, students examine these questions while paying tribute to artists Tino Sehgal and Trajal Harrell. Sehgal (born 1976) is of German and Pakistani descent, and studies dance and economics, creating “constructed situations” that model a value system based on humanity, energy, sociality, and memories of the performative experience.

Harrell (born 1973) is a Black American choreographer, internationally acclaimed for Paris is Burning at the Judson Church. Using “historical imagination” in this work, Harrell asked what would happen if a dancer of color from Harlem’s Vogue Ballroom LGBTQ+ scene had arrived in the 1960s Greenwich Village environment of Judson Church, which was experimental, post-modern, and predominantly white?

The concert is so much more, however, than performance only. Students also learn about gaining confidence, dedication, and being part of a community of dancers. Ninth grader Saraii C. said, “The dance concert has a special place in my heart because it has made me come out of my shell …it’s helping me gain a lot of confidence.” She added, “It’s really fun to meet new people and learn about different cultures through dance and it’s really cool to be a part of.”

“To me it means a lot,” ninth grader Bree G said, “because I’ve been dancing since I was young, but I’m also new at this school so I’m new to this experience…I’ve been putting a lot of time towards it.”

Seventh grader Anele T talked about the community-building that happens when performing in a concert: “I like dancing, and getting to be together with other students is fun. The middle school gets to unite with the high schoolers and gets to do something fun with them.”

“We talked about the theme of the concert,” says Bree, “and cultural appropriation and assimilation…and how that connects to the theme of the dance show. Is it possible to claim a dance as your own? ‘Cause it’s not like a physical thing – it’s more like a mental thing you carry.”

“In the BFS Dance Program,” says Jesse, “we are committed to learning dances in such a way that respects and protects their meanings, while also honoring that dance is not static, it continues to change and it changes us. This…production features the creative voices and visions of our students. Their critical thinking, artistic intelligence, and passion through movement is highlighted throughout the show. We invite you to be moved, and transformed, by the powerful work of these young dance artists.”

The True Story of the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up

Thanks, Joan Martin, for giving me the chance to write about Peter and the Starcatcher at Brooklyn Friends…

If you’ve always wanted to know how Peter Pan grew up to be the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up, this is your chance: Come see the Middle School production ofPeter and the Starcatcher on Fri. Feb. 8 at 4pm and 7:30pm, and Sat. Feb. 9 at 7pm in the Pearl Street Meetinghouse. (Tickets are free but you’ll need to reserve them here).

Peter and the Starcatcher serves as a high seas prequel to the story of Peter Pan, who in this incarnation finds himself recently orphaned and on a ship called Neverland. There he meets Molly, who is on a mission to save a treasure trunk filled with secret “star stuff” from the marauding pirate, Black Stache. Banding together, Peter and Molly defend themselves and their treasure while learning about devotion, friendship, and love. Based on the 2004 novel, by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, the work was conceived for the stage by Roger Rees and Alex Timbers, with book by Rick Elice, and had its Broadway debut in 2012.

Seventh grader Zachary R., who had a featured role in the fall musical, plays the title role of Peter. He is joined by 35 fellow actors, supported by a crew of 14.

“I wanted to do something that was like a lighthearted romp,” says Director Lorna Jordan. “In the Heights (the fall musical) was super heavy with difficult material – there were some really big themes. [This is] super silly and super goofy. It’s traditionally done by a smaller troupe of actors. Because we tend to have 40 kids audition for the show and I don’t cut kids from Middle School shows — considering it takes so much courage and guts to get up there and audition — I always cast everybody. So I thought, ok, I can cast anyone I want because we have mollusks, and mermaids and pirates and sailors! They are really embracing it!”

Students are hard at work, learning blocking and memorizing lines. Sixth grader Cecily P. plays Black Stashe, a featured role and the “past version of Captain Hook.” Preparing for the role, Cecily said, “I had to look on the side of how things developed into the sooner-or-later Captain Hook. I was thinking I had to put in some pirate part but also some English part. It’s really fun doing …movements to become a different character. This play is really amazing,” said Cecily, “and how it’s being performed by our age students is really phenomenal.”

Eighth grader Peter S., is the production’s Assistant Stage Manager. “This is my first time working as a stage manager, or any position on a stage crew, though for the last two years I have been a cast member in school plays. Really I was sort of thrown into it. I was able to watch Lorna direct the play and I got some tips from a previous stage manager who is much more experienced than I am. I feel like it’s a very different experience being on the stage than being off it.”

Lorna has done two shows annually for eight years at BFS. “This would be my 16th full-length play!” she says. The difference between the musical and the Middle School production? “The one thing I love about the musical…the fact that there is so much overlap between the upper schoolers and the middle schoolers…I think there are friendships that are forged that the kids don’t even ever expect and kids are being taken under the wing…I think it’s so great that it goes from one to the next because they get exposed to these older actors and kids who have done these shows for a long time and they learn from them. Then they come here and they are more prepared than they would have been.”

The most difficult part of being in the play? “The hardest part,” says Peter, “is the exhaustion of coming in every day and giving it what you got; it tires you out and then you get home at six and you have to do all your homework.”

And the best? “We have a lot to give to what this show is about,” says Pearl W, the head mermaid. “This play is just so funky and original and the ideas in it are so…they’re such nonsense that it just makes you laugh. There’s just so many crazy things that it’s a really different and fun experience,”

“We have some really talented actors and a really amazing set,” says Peter. As for Cecily? “It just takes people back to that Peter Pan feeling.”

— Anita Bushell

https://brooklynfriends.org/starcatcher19/

Creating with Cursive

“When children create something, they’re invested in it.” -- Jason Greenberg, school spokesman, Sea Star Waldorf School.

Handwriting has always been very close to my heart.

I was one of the lucky ones; I was taught cursive writing as a child. I never thought I’d be saying this but I have to because so few children are learning this skill in the digital age. It comes up in conversation with parents and teachers all the time. Parents are dismayed that their children are not being taught cursive and children are apologizing for their handwriting (as if it is their fault that they have not been taught the skill and given the opportunity to practice).

How many hours – indeed years -- did I put in learning cursive at the Rudolf Steiner School? I cannot imagine. Once we learned basic cursive, in second or third grade, we would copy Barbara Palesty’s history lesson from the blackboard – which she had written in cursive – in lead pencil in our “Good Books.” We would then go home and write over our lead pencil writing with our Sheaffer student fountain pens. Apparently children can learn cursive with fifteen minutes a day of practice. There is no question that we were putting in at least an hour a day, if you consider the copying of the lesson in school and the rewriting of it at home.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that Waldorf Schools are still teaching cursive and was thrilled to read the following article:

http://www.seastarwaldorfschool.com/sea-star-initiative/penmanship-waldorf-schools/

New Year, New Books

It’s a new year and there are so many books to read!

After the holidays, my bedside stack grows; there are memoirs, and works of fiction — as well as non —from last year that didn’t get finished and the new gifts that need to be started. Here it is…

Fashion Climbing — Bill Cunningham

The Bolter — Frances Osborne

Pride — Ibi Zoboi

When Things Fall Apart — Pema Chodron

Becoming — Michelle Obama

All the Stars in the Heavens — Adrianna Trigiani

Yorkville Twins — Joseph and John Gindele

Mrs. Osmond — John Banville

The Stories of John Cheever

The New York Public Library has a Read Harder Challenge that includes many amazing new titles in different genres.

https://www.nypl.org/blog/2018/12/28/read-harder-2019?utm_source=eNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NYPLTopPicks201901&utm_campaign=NYPLTopPicks

What I Did in Texas

Spent the weekend of the 17th in Houston, presenting a poster session on my work with reluctant writers, at the National Council of Teachers of English annual conference. What an amazing time I had, talking about reading and writing with fellow educators and students. If there is any good news out there, it is seeing an army of English professionals dedicated to becoming better at what they do.

A Baker Answers

I have always wanted to do an interview. Thanks so much to baker Andi Oakes for indulging me.

Q: Tell me about your training as a pastry chef; you had a different path to professional jobs in the field than most culinary students, didn't you?

A: Yes, I am self taught, which may have taken longer than an education in pastry at a culinary school, but I feel it was equally valuable. I did use books for reference initially, but the trial and error had to happen in the act of doing. While most of the basics for doughs, creams, cakes and the like are permanently etched in my brain, I find myself still in a state of constant learning, even after having done it for more than 25 years. Every restaurant that I worked in was a different experience, not only because the cuisine and level of the menu was varied, but because of the interactions with other chefs and cooks when sharing ideas and experiences.

Q: Are you still working in the field?

A: Although I am no longer working in restaurants, I still occasionally do some freelancing in pastry and catering for special events. I did have a specialty online store for a couple of years and took it down due to an illness in the family, but I found it very enjoyable and may pursue a similar business in the near future. I’m also considering the idea of having a food truck, which seems like a lot of hard work and fun!

Q: What are the challenges to becoming a pastry chef and remaining in the field?

A: When I first started out as a pastry chef, I was amazed at how different the working hours could be. One job began at 5 in the morning, another at 2 in the afternoon and sometimes I started working when the chef was finished at midnight. I have to say that, at times, it was a bit down-putting as dessert-and-pastry chefs are never treated as a priority, which I never understood because it was often the last memory of a meal! Besides the schedule and long hours, it was competitive and it was important to keep things fresh and new without being “trendy.” I’ve also never known any pastry chef who wasn’t an extreme perfectionist —myself included — which is a blessing and a curse. You would never hear one sending out or displaying a baked good, saying, “I guess that’ll do…”

Q: As you know, Glaser's Bake Shop, in Yorkville, has closed. "Herb Glaser said he's ready for retirement. 'Although it seems fun,' he said, 'working at a bakery is hard work with long hours.' " (WABC-TV News). Can you comment on the kinds of hours bakers keep?

A: As I mentioned in the prior answer, the hours were odd but always long. Unless I was feeling physically under the weather, I never minded putting in 10-to-15 hours a shift because it was — and still is — a great passion of mine. I adore the layering of steps (no pun intended) required as you build the separate components to create the perfect dessert. It was, however, physically exhausting and hard on the back, which I would usually feel when doing repeatedly heavy lifting or delicate long decorative work or simply towards the end of the workday.

Q: When Jon Vie, in the Village, closed in 2004, owner Nathan Prusack said, "People do not come in on their way home to pick up pastries or desserts. They're health-conscious." What are your feelings about this? I see bakeries all over the city with cakes in the windows. SOMEone is eating cake… 

A: Dessert is definitely still happening. People are so funny about it these days, either confessing that they had it (as though it’s something to be ashamed of) or boasting about it (in a post on social media). Health consciousness is also very present and I personally feel that butter, eggs and all “real” food is healthy food as long as a person is not sensitive or allergic to it.  A few years ago I was diagnosed with a severe gluten allergy, which I thought HAD to be a joke from the pastry gods! After my initial shock and mourning period, I began experimenting with gluten free flours and baking and found it to be yet another chapter in the unending world of baking education. While some things can’t truly be successfully converted, I was happy to find that it’s quite possible to create some fabulous pastry for restricted and altered diets. That being said, nothing beats the original and I will continue to bake, whether I can eat it or not! Regarding Mr. Prusack’s comment, I feel it’s sadly true for the most part and people feel that there has to be a special occasion to indulge, in this country, without feeling badly about it. When visiting Switzerland, France and Italy, we “celebrated” nearly every dinner in the joy of a dessert.

Q: From your writing, I can tell you clearly love to cook and bake for yourself and your friends. Any plans to share your love of food with a larger audience in the future? 

A: I absolutely love writing about food and hope to complete a cookbook in the next year or two. I would also like to share some of my experiences and recipes with food magazines or possibly start a food blog, if time allows. Some additional thoughts: It is with a teary eye, and also a sigh of gratitude that I say goodbye to Glaser’s and other establishments like it who have devoted their time, energy and hearts in honor of the art of pastry. I feel so blessed that I stumbled upon this career and am constantly amazed at the joy it has brought me and others. I still get so excited when I create a beautiful dessert or learn a new skill and I will continue to do it until there’s nothing left to learn.

A New Beginning

             “That Monday in October, 1943. A beautiful day with the buoyancy of a bird…in the park…we giggled, ran, sang along the paths toward the old, wooden boathouse…leaves floated on the lake; on the shore, a park-man was fanning a bonfire of them…Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring…”

            So said Truman Capote, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

            There is always a day in October -- when pumpkins appear on the stands, the sky is cloudless and cerulean, and, most of all, the late summer’s heat has finally been fanned away -- that seems like a new beginning.  

            These are the days when hot tea is finally an option and sweaters are found. They are also the days that I think of Central Park and how lucky I was to have this extraordinary landscape as my childhood playground.

            We jumped rope and played Red Rover; in the winter we sledded down Cedar Hill. We were blissfully unconnected, unlike the way children, from babyhood, are now. To see the photographs in the stunning Central Park Country: A Tune Within Us (SierraClub/Ballantine, 1970) is to glimpse another time.

            The images can be misty and ethereal, taking us out of the city where they are located, or grounded and humorous, such as when a tired child leans against a green balloon.

            This book caught my breath when I discovered it with my friend, Kate, who had brought me to the divine Book Cellar in the basement of the New York Public Library, Webster branch. My father, a retired librarian in the Queens system, brought me a copy of this book from the library when I was a little girl. I have not seen it since.

            With a foreword by then-Sierra-Club president David Brower, and a beautiful introduction by the poet Marianne Moore, Central Park Country, reminds me of the power of nature in the city and new beginnings in October.

 

 

The Novel That Won't Go Away

Last year The New York Times did a well-deserved tribute to Daphne du Maurier:

“What happened was “Rebecca,” an instant best seller that has never gone out of print and still sells about 50,000 copies a year, according to its British publishers. The novel inspired the film adaptation directed by Alfred Hitchcock, spinoffs and a line of watches. It even found admirers on both sides of the war: Neville Chamberlain took his copy with him when he flew to Munich to meet Hitler, and the Germans, in turn, fashioned a cryptogram from the text.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/books/daphne-du-maurier-enthusiast.html

What the article failed to point out is that Rebecca is still assigned reading in many American high schools and is, therefore, often not available during the school year at one’s local library (a fact happily discovered by this writer just last week).

Another new discovery: a scholarly introduction to the novel. When I was writing my graduate school thesis on Rebecca in the late 1990s, this did not exist. Rebecca was still published in mass-market paperback form, replete with red satin cover image typical of drug store romance novels. You opened the book and there you were, right in the opening dream sequence.

I always felt that Rebecca deserved so much more; happily Everyman’s Library has provided. Their 2017 publication of the novel includes a scholarly instruction by British author, critic and journalist Lucy Hughes-Hallet, who writes an extraordinary appreciation of the imagery, subtlety, and complexity of this stunning novel that simply won’t go away.

For a Sunday bonus, read about the man who learned to love literature from Rebecca:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/20/rebecca-daphne-du-maurier-classic-literature

A Timelessness and a Universality

Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier’s most famous novel not out of publication since its 1938 release, was initially insulted by the label “woman’s novel.”

No help was du Maurice herself, who wrote in her pre-draft notes:

“Very roughly, the book will be about the influence of a first wife on a second...until wife 2 is haunted day and night…a tragedy is looming very close and crash! Bang! Something happens.”

Rebecca has been a part of my literary life since age ten, when I first read it and had the initial young-girl-captivated-by-a-romantic-English-novel reaction. What did I know?

It wasn’t until I returned to Rebecca in graduate school and realized how much more there was to it. While Rebecca is set contemporaneously in 1938 and the English class system is about to topple, it is very much about the refreshing nature of uncomplicated love. Maxim’s attraction to the young woman he meets in Monte Carlo cannot be more absurd, by the standards of his lord-of-the-manor background. She is American, she is penniless, and she is working for the oppressive Mrs. Van Hopper as a “paid companion.” I can almost hear the equally-oppressive Lady Catherine de Bourgh, of Pride and Prejudice, admonishing Elizabeth when talk of marriage to her nephew, the formidable Fitzwilliam Darcy ensues: “The upstart pretensions of a young woman without family, connections, or fortune. Is this to be endured!”

Of course Rebecca is also one of the greatest ghost stories ever written, complete with English manor, brooding husband, and evil householder, Mrs. Danvers, who, in Hitchcock’s film could not have been played more perfectly by Judith Anderson.

Rebecca is also about facades, and the emotional exhaustion it takes to keep them up in order to not lose face in society. The unnamed narrator of the story, who becomes the second Mrs. De Winter, knows nothing of facades because she is the definition of “what you see is what you get.” She has nothing to hide; indeed, she wouldn’t even know how to hide something were she asked to do so.

Until the forced circumstances of living up to mistress-of-the-manor expectations prove to be too much. It is at this precise point that she begins to crack, just like the china cupid she knocks over onto the floor. She has been indoctrinated into the need to have secrets. Clearly, you cannot live at the grand Manderley without them.

Ultimately, though, I love Rebecca for its timelessness and its universality; the way in which this novel could have been written in almost any era of the 19th or 20th centuries:

“The room would bear witness to our presence. The little heap of library books marked ready to return, and the discarded copy of The Times. Ashtrays, with the stub of a cigarette; cushions, with the imprint of our heads upon them, lolling in the chairs; the charred embers of our log fire still smoldering against the morning. And Jasper, dear Jasper, with his soulful eyes and great, sagging jowl, would be stretched upon the floor, his tail a-thump when he heard his master’s footsteps.”

Autumn is upon us and a cool breeze has descended. What a perfect time to put on a pot of tea and curl up with one of my many copies of the divine Rebecca.