Book # 39

Madeline L'Engle

( Herself )

Reflections on a Writing Life

Compiled by Carole F. Chase

When I was an adolescent I read the book "A Wrinkle in Time", written by Madeline L'Engle. I can't for the life of me tell you what it was about, although by its title I can guess. But I do remember that my younger brother read it too and after that, we occasionally kept tabs on what the other was reading and liked. We both love to read and we both want to write (be writers...haha). I can't really tell you why I checked this book out but when I read what she wrote about writers, it really helped.

This is what she said, "BEING A WRITER MEANS WRITING....it does not necessarily mean being published. It's very nice to be published. It's what you want. When you have a vision, you want to share it. Being a writer means writing. It means building up a body of work. It means writing every day. You can hardly say that van Gogh was not a painter because he sold one painting during his lifetime and that to his brother. But do you say that van Gogh wasn't a painter because he wasn't "published"? He was a painter because he painted, because he held true to his vision as he saw it...."

TRUE ART. All art, good, bad, indifferent, reflects its culture. Great art transcends its culture and touches on that which is eternal. Two writers may write the same story about the same man and woman and their relationship with each other. One writer will come up with art and the other with pornography. There is no subject that is not appropriate for the artist, but the way in which it is handled can sometimes be totally inappropriate. True art has mythic quality in that it speaks of that which was true, is true and will be true."

One of Madeline's favorite assignments is to ask her class to write a midrash. A midrash is a commentary on scripture that attempts to fill in details but does not change the story. She tells them to think as long as they want, but they can only write for only half an hour. They have to share them with the class, and then they have to pass their story to another student and that person has to rewrite the story from the point of view of someone else in the story. "We don't often think about how Bildad the Shuhite might have felt, or Leah's or Rachel's maids. What about Cain's wife? What about Lot's wife, or even Jezebel?" This is a subject I have thought about often. Perhaps I will try a midrash or two of my own.

UNDERSTANDING AS A CHILD

“In the act of creation our logical, prove-it-to-me minds relax; we begin to understand anew all that we understood as children....But this understanding is – or should be – greater than the child's because we understand in the light of all that we have learned and experienced in growing up. George Elliot says, 'If we had a keen vision of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of the roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well-wadded with stupidity.'” I don't claim to understand that which she and George Elliot wrote, but I love his phrase – The quickest of us walk about well-wadded with stupidity.”   It is at times like this when I long for my husband to be alive, so that I could share this phrase with him and we could enjoy a private joke between us. “Hey, did you see that lady? She's sure well-wadded with stupidity!” Or, “I can't believe my boss. He was well-wadded with stupidity today!” Or, “I got a call from the high school. Our son was acting well-wadded with stupidity in his gym class.” I shared it with an adult son and he just didn't enjoy it like I know my husband would have. Oh well....Just know that if you catch me snickering after some do-do has gone by, that is what I am thinking.

I love the story of how "A Wrinkle In Time" got published. It was rejected by publishers for two and a half years and she was giving up. But her mother knew one of the publishers of Farrar, Straus & Giroux and insisted that she meet with him. John Farrar read the manuscript and loved it but was afraid of it. He felt that adults wouldn't understand it, so they decided to publish it as a childrens book. They took a risk, and she was very pleased that it turned out that this much rejected book was the best seller of Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

She spoke about dreaming and asking her subconscious mind to work on whatever particular problem she wants it to. If she wakes up in the night with a good idea, she says, "Remind me of this in the morning please." She said that her subconscious mind is very cooperative if she is courteous with it. .... I  found that very funny but want to try it.

This was a difficult book for me to read. She seems to me to be a very flowery, religious, enigmatical, intense and somewhat verbose person.  But, I found her at times to be profound. I want to read some of her books again, just to see how I relate to them now as an adult. But reading this book of her quotes made me think of AP English as a Senior in High School and all the "great" literature we read. I hated most of it. Especially Hemingway. I like direct. I don't want to read some weird, usually depressing story and try to figure out the deeper meaning behind it all. Maybe I am too simple for great literature. That said, here are my favorite quotes from the book.

" We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it."

"For me, to work on a book is the same thing as to pray. Both  involve that unpopular word discipline....To pray is also to listen. To move through my own chattering to God, to get beyond those words to that place where I can be silent and then listen to what God may have to say."

"I cannot live in a world without God. I am frequently asked "Aren't you strong enough to live without God?' And I say, 'No, of course not.'"

One story made me laugh and wonder. She wrote a book called "The Arm of the Starfish". She said that she had the plot of the story all worked out and had 150 pages written. "So, as I had planned the story, Adam Eddington, the protagonist, has gone three nights without sleep, and he is finally allowed to go to sleep in the Ritz Hotel in Lisbon. In the morning when he wakes up after having slept probably fifteen hours, there sitting and looking at him was a young man called Joshua. Now Adam was surprised to see Joshua. I was surprised to see Joshua. There had been no Joshua in my plot....(she rewrote the 150 pages to fit  Joshua in) I cannot imagine the book without Joshua. But where did he come from? And how did he come named Joshua? When he arrived and so named, I had a strong suspicion that he would be dead before the end of the book. And, indeed, he was." I have heard other writers talk about how their stories and characters have a life of their own but I cannot imagine it. Someday I hope to understand. 

Until Next Time :o).

Book # 38

Always Looking Up

The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist

By Michael J. Fox

I liked this book. When I checked it out from the library, I was mostly curious how someone with an incurable disease such as Parkinson's, can remain optimistic. But I found myself liking it so much I didn't want to put it down, even through the semi-boring political parts.

I was impressed by several things.

One, I would attribute his success to 3 things. 

His very supportive wife, Tracy.

His ambitious nature and having a goal to work towards, especially after his acting career was mostly over.

His personality, which is that he wants to be, and works toward being liked.

Second, he and his wife have been married for 20+ years. In the Hollywood world, that doesn't happen a lot. Although, he hasn't really stayed a part of Hollywood. He lives in New York.

 

Third, he is actually a pretty great writer. I didn't read his first book, "Lucky Man" but I am tempted to read that one too.

Fourth, he seems to be a loving, family man. He was in LA on 9/11 and although he was supposed to be filming the next day in a minor TV part, he rented a car and some drivers and made it back to New York in 2 days. I remember 9/11 and how my husband and I had plans to be away from our home and children that day. I couldn't go. I can't imagine what it must have felt like to be across the continent from your family, when they were in NYC and the news  was talking about how there might be more attacks. He must have been frantic.

A few of my favorite parts...

"I don't give much thought to how others perceive symptoms; I have enough on my plate. I will take time, however, to explain myself to kids, who are often curious and wonderfully straightforward. I was once talking with a little girl at Esme's preschool, who broke off our conversation mid-sentence and exclaimed in honest exasperation, 'Will you quit moving around!' I eventually managed to stop laughing long enough to promise her I'd give it a shot."

"Parkinson's and alcohol took a sledgehammer to any illusions I may have had that I was in control. I came to accept that any disease or condition beyond my control is, in effect, a power greater than myself. To survive this destructive energy, I must look to an even higher power. For my purposes, I need neither define it nor have others define it for me, only accept its existence.....And since I'm not sure of the address to which to send my gratitude, I put it out there in everything I do."

"Sam (their son) always struggled with basic arithmetic, but as his education progressed, he inexplicably proved to be excellent at math---sounds like a contradiction, but its not. While the basic stuff --- quick addition, multiplication tables, long division --- seemed to baffle him, when he had more complex processes to master --- algebra, trig, calculus --- he thrived. I think Tracy and I feel the same way about marriage. The more complicated it gets, the more it seems to bring out the best in us. Confronted with a complication as seemingly dire as my PD diagnoses, so early in our marriage, could have left us undone.....The change that Parkinson's itself has forced upon me and, by extension, Tracy and the family, pales in comparison to the changes we have brought upon ourselves. We give more to each other than Parkinson's could ever take away."

MJF took a road trip across the USA in 1997 with his son Sam and a neighbor and his 2 kids. The question---"Are we there yet?" posed too frequently on the trip, caused him to ponder.  He wrote, "Am I there yet? was really the question that launched our suburban across the continent ---"there" being the point of no return beyond which Parkinson's dictated the terms of my life. Had the sweeping changes I had instituted---sobriety, a reordering of priorities---come too late? Was there enough of me left to be the man I had never, until now, known that I wanted to be? To say that my attitude toward the disease itself was far less involved than it is today would be a gross understatement. I still didn't fully own it and was still wrestling with how wholly it owned me. So this journey was, in large part, a rebellion. My maps and lists and contact sheets were preparation, if not for battle, then for some heavy-duty reconnaissance. I discovered on this trip that maps and borders are arbitrary and often invisible. Without man-made signs, nothing would inform you that you'd transitioned from one place to another. It's all personal perception. Traveling the country coast to coast, I gained an understanding that the ancient, primal boundaries---the Mississippi River, the Continental Divide, the Rocky Mountains, and the Grand Canyon---mark true change. The risk of crossing is rewarded with the discovery of something entirely new and powerful on the other side. Gradually, I relaxed into the idea that what was happening inside of me was only part of my world. The ticking clock that was beginning to create an unhealthy sense of urgency was in fact a metronome that I could dial down to an appropriate  tempo....

Until Next Time  :o)

Book # 37

HIGHWAY 50

Ain't that America

By Jim Lilliefors

Since I live just off of highway 50, I was interested when I saw this book at the library. I never realized that Main Street in Delta was part of a highway that spans the United States from the east coast  at Ocean City, Maryland to the west coast at Sacramento, California. It used to go all the way to San Francisco, but they made it into an interstate from Sacramento to San Francisco (much to the dismay of highway 50 fans).

Published in 1993, the author never revealed when he actually took his year and a half long trip across the country, but whenever it was, it was a strange glimpse into the differences between the people that populate small town U.S.A. As he traveled across the country, he would stop in the towns and work for a day, a week, or until he was ready to move on. He worked on an oyster boat, at a coal mine, on an Amish farm. He was invited to be a deputy Marshall in Dodge City, Kansas, which seemed to be his favorite city of all he visited. (Green River, Utah was another favorite.) He went to a stock car race -- where he got to drive a race car around the track, a horse race -- where he lost every bet, and a tractor pull -- which he found very boring. He spent time in a Benedictine Abbey, toured the underground storage vaults in Hutchinson, Kansas, and visited every museum he could find along the way. He met many friendly people, and some not so friendly people on his journey. He met people that had never been anywhere but the town they were born in, and people who were wandering, as he was. 

He found that most of the people he met in the small towns along the way, had one thing in common. They like the slower pace and the simpler way of living. They resist change. They are protective of their lifestyles and are generally satisfied with their lives. I understand that feeling. I live in Delta. Some of my family don't understand why I have stayed here, why I like it here. Well, this is how I see it.... There are people who like living in the big city. I think they must like change, a faster pace, sensual stimulation, lots of people and things to do. I don't know, maybe they get bored easily. Then there are people who like living in the country, in the small towns that cluster around the agriculture, the mines, or other industries found far from the cities. I think they must like things predictable, living life at a slower pace, knowing a smaller amount of people, but possibly knowing them better. They are comfortable with entertaining themselves, or at least satisfied with a smaller choice of entertainment. They like breathing room.....quiet.....peace. That is why I like living here, just 2 blocks from highway 50. 

I do think the big city is fun to visit. I like to travel and see different places, people, things. And reading this book made me want to take my own journey across Highway 50 someday.

Until Next Time :o)

Book # 36

The Best of My Life

An Anthology of Memories

Edited by Judith Leet

This book contains excerpts from the autobiographies of famous persons. 

The lives recalled are:

James Thurber, Agatha Christie, Russell Baker, David Niven, Ben Franklin, Arthur Rubinstein, Mary McCarthy, Margaret Mead, Gloria Vanderbuilt, Anne Frank, N. Scott Momaday, Patricia Hong Kingston, John Waters, Eudora Welty, Henry Adams, William Nolan, Richard Fenyman, Clyde Beatty, Marion "Clover" Adams, Hellen Keller, Malcolm X, Thomas Merton, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Harry Truman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Frederick Douglass, Lillian Hellman, Shirley MacLaine, Irene Mayer Selznick, Henry David Thoreau, May Sarton, E.B.White, John Ciardi, Golda Meir, Victor Frankl, John Montgomery, Mary Heaton Vorse, Bertrand Russell.

I thought that I enjoyed reading autobiographies, but while reading this anthology, I found that I don't enjoy reading ALL autobiographies, but there were several of these I liked very much.  I will mention a few. 

Agatha Christie was born in 1890, at the end of what would be called the Victorian Age. She spoke at length about the "great Victorian Christmas feasts" of her childhood., which had me alternating between envy and nausea. But what I really liked were her thoughts about work and of the position of women. She wrote, "There seems to me to be an odd assumption that there is something meritorious about working. Why? In early times man went out to hunt animals in order to feed himself and keep alive. Later, he toiled over crops, and sowed and ploughed for the same reason. Nowadays, he rises early, catches the 8:15, and sits in an office all day-- still for the same reason. He does it to feed himself and have a roof over his head-- and if skilled and lucky, to go a bit further and have comfort and entertainment as well. It's economic and necessary. But why is it meritorious? The old nursery adage used to be "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do." Presumably little Georgie Stephenson  (inventor and engineer  of steam engines) was enjoying idleness when he observed his mother's tea kettle lid rising and falling. Having nothing at the moment to do, he began to have ideas about it. I don't think necessity is the mother of invention -- invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble. That is the big secret that has brought is down the ages hundreds of thousands of years, from chipping flints to switching on the washing-up machine."

What she said about the position of women made me laugh out loud.  I don't necessarily agree with all she wrote, but she does make a point. "The position of women, over the years, has definitely changed for the worse. We women have behaved like mugs. We have clamored to be allowed to work as men work. Men, not being fools, have taken kindly to the idea. Why support a wife? What's wrong with a wife supporting herself? She wants to do it. By golly, she can go on doing it!....You've got to hand it to Victorian women, they got their menfolk where they wanted them. They established their frailty, delicacy, sensibility -- their constant need of being protected and cherished. Did they lead miserable, servile lives, downtrodden and oppressed? Such is not my recollection of them. All my grandmother's friends seem to me in retrospect singularly resilient and almost invariably successful in getting there own way. They were tough, self willed, and remarkably well read and well informed....In daily life a woman got her own way while paying due lip service to male superiority, so that her husband should not lose face. "your father knows best, dear," was the public formula. The real approach came privately. "I'm sure you are quite right in what you said John, but I wonder if you have considered..." 

The last thing she said  that I liked was "It is astonishing how much you can enjoy almost everything. There are few things more desirable that to be an accepter and an enjoyer." Seems like a simplistic statement, but think about it.... Who do we prefer to be around? Someone who is cheerful and accepts any  life situation they are in, and accepts YOU as well? Or someone who is whiny and complains about everything they encounter? We don't like being around the whiner, but we often don't hesitate or even hear ourselves being the whiner. Thou shalt not whine is one of my 2012 resolutions. I want to be an enjoyer and accepter.

The other entry that I particularly enjoyed was about Russell Baker, a prize winning New York Times writer and humorist. He wrote about how his father died when he was 7 and how his widowed mother struggled to make something out of him. She forced him to sell magazines door to door. He hated sales. "Three years in that job...produced at least one valuable result. My mother finally concluded that I would never make something of myself by pursuing a life in business and started considering careers that demanded less competitive zeal. One evening when I was eleven, I brought home a short composition on my summer vacation which the teacher had graded with an A. Reading it with her own school teachers eye, my mother agreed that it was top-drawer seventh grade prose and complimented me...."Buddy, she said, maybe you could be a writer". I clasped the idea to my heart....I loved stories and thought that making up stories must surely be almost as much fun as reading them. Best of all, though, and what really gladdened my heart, was the ease of the writer's life. Writers did not have to trudge through the town peddling from canvas bags, defending themselves against angry dogs, being rejected by surly strangers. Writers did not have to ring doorbells. So far as I could make out, what writers did couldn't even be classified as work. I was enchanted. Writers didn't have to have any gumption at all....I decided that what I'd like to be when I grew up was a writer."

I found the story of Shirley MacLaine's rise to fame pretty interesting. She came from a dull, uninspiring, middle class family in Virginia. Because of weak ankles as a child, her mother signed her up for ballet. She excelled and I was impressed by her self motivation. She would go to rehearsals after school, which would last until midnight. She would take the hour and a half bus ride home, walk to a dark house, where she usually ate a dinner of saltine crackers smothered in ketchup and Tabasco, and drink a quart of ginger ale. She'd get to bed by 2am, and was up again at 6:30 for school. Her story of going from amateur ballerina to famous film star is pretty amazing.

The most amazing story to me was of Malcolm X. He was an underworld street hustler serving a ten-year prison sentence for burglary. While in prison he became converted to the black Muslim faith led by Elijah Muhammad. He wrote, "I became increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters that I wrote, especially those to Mr. Elijah Muhammad. In the street, I had been the most articulate hustler out there, I had commanded attention when I said something. But now, trying to write simple English, I not only wasn't articulate, I wasn't even functional." So he began to teach himself by reading the dictionary. He would read and copy word for word a page of the dictionary, and then read aloud everything he'd written. The next day, he would see how much he could remember, and review the words whose meanings he didn't remember. As his vocabulary grew, he began to read in every spare moment he had. He said that he would get annoyed when lights out at 10pm came along, but would continue reading in the dim glow of a light in the corridor. He would have to jump into bed and feign sleep every time a guard came by. He said that he slept only 3 or 4 hours a night. Now that is impressive dedication!

The last one I will mention was written by John Ciardi. He was an author of poetry and children's books and was the poetry editor of the Saturday Review. He wrote an essay titled "What is Happiness?"  He wrote, "The forces of American commercialism are hugely dedicated to making us deliberately unhappy. Advertising is one of our major industries, and advertising exists not to satisfy our desires but to create them - and to create them faster than any man's budget can satisfy them. For that matter, our whole economy is based on a dedicated insatiability....Whatever else happiness may be, it is neither in having nor in being, but in becoming. What the founding fathers declared for us as an inherent right, we should do well to remember, was not happiness but the pursuit of happiness... A nation is not measured by what is possesses or wants to possess, but by what it wants to become." The essay is very good but very long, so I only shared a tidbit.

OH, there is just one more...by Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel 1969 to 1974. In 1971, she visited the grade school that she attended as a child in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She spoke to the school children and this was one of the things that she said, "It isn't really important to decide when you are very young just exactly what you want to become when you grow up. It is much more important to decide on the way you want to live."

Until Next Time :o)

Book # 35

Starting From Scratch

Secrets from 21 Ordinary People Who Made the Entrepreneurial Leap

By Wes Moss

I am being wishy washy. I read this book and although it was okay, I wasn't going to blog about it. So I took it back to the library, and then the next day I changed my mind. So I went back to the library and took some notes. There is not a lot but maybe it will give you an idea of whether you want to read it or not.

The author talks about the HUNT. 

First, you "HARNESS WHAT YOU HAVE. Embark on an internal, 2 part process of self discovery. First identify your inherent skills. Second, figure out something tangible that you love: a product, industry, or trade you are proud to be associated with. Put them together and you've got a business venture."

Second, you "UNDERESTIMATE YOUR OBSTACLES. Practice the learned trait of optimism. Define a vision and mentally bypass the multitude of things that can go wrong or stand in your way so you can focus on your own personal and all-important vision."

Third, "NOTICE YOUR NETWORK. Engage in a process of external recognition. Find those around you who can assist you in realizing your vision, and utilize the leverage that others provide in reaching your particular goal."

Fourth, then you must "TAKE THE FIRST STEP. Develop a bias toward action. This step provides the catalyst that makes any entrepreneurial dream or vision turn into reality. Without it, there is no HUNT."

My favorite story was about Susan Flores, founder of the Barefoot Cafe on the Providenciales Island in the Turks and Caicos chain. Heck if I know where that is....somewhere in the Caribbean. I guess if your going to work reeeeeeally hard on starting and running a business, then you might as well make it somewhere nice, eh?

What I really learned from this book, is that I am not entrepreneurial material. At least not right now. I am still in the mom phase and I don't want anything to interfere with that. Maybe someday I will feel passionate about something else enough to give my life to it, because basically that is what each one of those 21 people did.

Until Next Time :o)