Endless Knots

Don't Bite Your Tongue by Ruth Nemzoff

The cliches about the difficulties parents have talking to their children (and v/v) are numerous - and once you've heard them, say, 20 or 30 times, you wonder why people aren't listening to themselves: "Teenagers never look you in the eye," "If I tell her anything, she goes ballistic," etc, etc. Not even worth wracking the brain for more - you know them well and have likely said them all.

Then there's Dr. Ruth Nemzoff's new book, Don't Bite Your Tongue: How to Foster Rewarding Relationships with Your Adult Children, which comes out in just a couple of weeks. I was lucky to receive the uncorrected proofs (now known as ARC, advanced reading copy) and have enjoyed it immensely. In a sentence, instead of stuffing it when you're afraid to engage a touchy subject, do the opposite, she says, and pay attention to how you're really feeling and what your child (or you and your parent) is/are really saying. Goes both ways. It's no news that we're trapped in a lot of unproductive patterns as parents and kids but as Ruth takes apart one anecdote after another, we (OK, I) begin to see shades of myself: an adult son, laid off, and his family move back in with his single mom, who's enjoying her life. Animosities develop and then the mom has the guts to throw some light into the dark corners. (For the record, my kids are not being laid off or moving back in - breathe easy, girls.)

Chapter titles hit the touchiest of touchies: Emerging Adulthood, Refilling the Nest, Weddings, Grandparenting, Money, Eternal Triangles...you get the picture. Ever had a fight over any of those, readers?

Everyone I've mentioned this book to has said the same thing: "I need to read that."

You do.

I don't make a practice of listing every speaking engagement that my writer friends have (yes, Ruth's a friend and a member of our famous Fiction Book Club) but given the tremendous response to the book evidenced by the LARGE number of talks and interviews she's already booked, I'm doing that here. Congrats, Ruth! And, for the record, she and her hubby Harris Berman are parents of four grown children (and six grandchildren) - and they're all still on speaking terms:

JULY 28  Monday

8:00 PM

            Wellfleet,MA Public Library

55 West Main Street Wellfleet, MA 02667

Contact: Elaine McIlroy, emcilroy@clamsnet.org,

            508-349-0310

  

AUGUST 9 Saturday

            8:00 AM and 2:00 PM

            Radio Interview

            WNSH "Countdown to College"

 

AUGUST 10 Sunday

              6:00 PM

              Radio Interview

              WNSH "Countdown to College"

 

Solstice MFA Reading Series July 11-18, 2008

Enjoy hearing great writers in an intimate setting? This reading series from the Solstice MFA program is always terrific. Some of my fave writers, again, including Roland Merullo reading from his newest, American Savior. I was able to get my hands on an Advance Reading Copy and - how do I put into words the gesture where you put your fingers to your lips, kiss, and whip that smooch into the universe with a wave of the arm? I promise to post about the book itself - it's canny, timely, and very funny. I do hope the NY Times Book Review catches this one. Here's the press release from program director, Meg Kearney, who's also reading and, worth noting, a supremely good reader herself:

THE SOLSTICE MFA OF PINE MANOR COLLEGE ANNOUNCES ITS JULY READING SERIES

[Chestnut Hill, MA, July 1, 2008]  The Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program of Pine Manor College announces its July Reading Series. The following writers will read from their work at 7:30 p.m. (unless otherwise noted) in the Founder’s Room of Pine Manor College, located at 400 Heath Street in Chestnut Hill. All readings are free and open to the public; copies of the authors’ books will be available for sale and signing before and after the readings. Plenty of free parking!

Friday, July 11: Fiction & nonfiction writer Randall Kenan (The Fire This Time, Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Century, and Let the Dead Bury Their Dead), & novelist Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Shutter Island, and the forthcoming The Given Day).

Saturday, July 12: Graduating MFA student Kirsten Blocker, poet Kathleen Aguero (Daughter Of, The Real Weather, and Thirsty Day), & novelist Sterling Watson (Sweet Dream, Baby; The Calling; and Weep No More, My Brother).

Sunday, July 13: Graduating MFA student Adam Eisenson, Program Administrator and fiction writer Tanya Whiton (published in Crazyhorse and Northwest Review), plus novelist & young people’s writer Laban Carrick Hill (America Dreaming: How Youth Changed America in the 60s, A Brush With Napoleon, and Casa Azul).

Monday, July 14 at 4:30 p.m.: MFA student readings.

Tuesday, July 15: Graduating MFA student Maryann Jacob, MFA Program Director and poet Meg Kearney (An Unkindness of Ravens, The Secret of Me, and the forthcoming Home By Now), and poet, essayist, & short-story writer Ray Gonzalez (The Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande, The Underground Heart: A Return to a Hidden Landscape, and the forthcoming Faith Run: Lyrical Poems and Cool Auditor: Prose Poems).

Wednesday, July 16: Graduating MFA student John Theo, Jr., YA novelist Laura Williams McCaffrey (Alia Waking and Water Shaper), and special guest novelist & nonfiction writer Roland Merullo (In Revere, In Those Days; Golfing With God; A Little Love Story; and the forthcoming American Savior).

Thursday, July 17 at 4:30 p.m.: MFA student readings

Thursday, July 17: Poet & fiction writer Steven Huff (A Pig In Paris, The Water We Came From, and More Daring Escapes), fiction & nonfiction writer Joy Castro (The Truth Book), & novelist Helen Elaine Lee (Water Marked, The Serpent’s Gift, and the forthcoming Life Without).

Friday, July 18: poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar (A New Hunger, Small Gods of Grief, and The Hour Between Dog and Wolf), YA novelist An Na (The Fold, A Step From Heaven, and Wait for Me), and essayist & memoirist Michael Steinberg (editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction; author of Still Pitching).

Directions to Pine Manor College, complete bios of our authors, and more information about the Solstice MFA Program can be found at www.pmc.edu/mfa.

A perfect summer evening at Solstice Summer Writers' Conference

Regular Endless Knotters know that I'm a great fan of Solstice Summer Writers' Conference. And not just because my friends are involved. Three years ago, I attended the inaugural session of the conference; nine months later, I'd finished a novel. Rocket fuel for writers. Among the gifts of the conference, the evening reading series. Here's the line-up for this year's conference, which begins this coming Sunday at Pine Manor College, Chestnut Hill, Mass, just outside Boston. Choose any evening and you'll be amply rewarded. Here's the press release:

THE SOLSTICE SUMMER WRITERS’ CONFERENCE ANNOUNCES ITS JUNE READING SERIES

[Chestnut Hill, MA, May, 2008]  Pine Manor College announces its annual Solstice Summer Writers’ Conference Reading Series. All readings begin at 7:00 p.m. unless *otherwise noted, and are held in the Founder’s Room of Pine Manor College, located at 400 Heath Street in Chestnut Hill. Copies of the authors’ books will be available for sale after all readings; cash-bar receptions will follow the readings on June 22, 27, & 28. *Plenty of free parking!

Sunday, June 22 at 7:30 p.m.  Francisco Aragón & Julia Glass
Francisco Aragón (author of Puerta del Sol; editor of The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry) & Julia Glass (author of The Whole World Over and 2002 National Book Award winner Three Junes).                           

Monday, June 23 at 7:00 p.m.  Cleopatra Mathis & Tor Seidler
Cleopatra Mathis (author of White Sea and What to Tip the Boatman? winner of the 2001 Jane Kenyon Award) & Tor Seidler (author of the forthcoming Gully’s Travels; Publisher’s Weekly Pick of the List The Wainscott Weasel; and Mean Margaret).

Tuesday, June 24 at 7:00 p.m   Meg Kearney & Steven Huff
Director Meg Kearney (author of An Unkindness of Ravens and The Secret of Me) & Steven Huff (author of the forthcoming A Pig in Paris and More Daring Escapes).

Thursday, June 26 at 7:00 p.m.  Patricia Spears Jones, Lee Hope, & Eric Gansworth
Patricia Spears Jones (author of Femme du Monde and The Weather That Kills), Lee Hope (Pushcart Prize-nominee and winner of the Theodore Goodman Award for Fiction), & Eric Gansworth (author of Indian Summers and Mending Skins, winner of the 2006 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles National Literary Award).

Friday, June 27 at 3:15 p.m.   Brenda Prescott & Tanya Whiton
Program Administrator Tanya Whiton (published in literary journals including Northwest Review and Crazyhorse 63) & Brenda Prescott (published in literary journals including Crab Orchard Review and The Louisville Review).

Friday, June 27 at 7:00 p.m.   Marina Budhos & Stephen Dunn
Marina Budhos (author of The Professor of Light and House of Waiting; Rona Jaffe Award winner) & Stephen Dunn (author of fourteen collections of poetry, including Everything Else in the World and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Different Hours).

Saturday, June 28 at 7:00 p.m.  Barbara Hurd & Dennis Lehane
Barbara Hurd (author of Walking the Wrack Line: On Tidal Shifts and What Remains and Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark, a Library Journal Best Natural History Book of the Year) & Dennis Lehane (author of the forthcoming The Given Day, Mystic River, Shutter Island, and Gone Baby, Gone).

Congrats, Xujun

There's nothing like the first time. I'm talking about books here.

Xujun Eberlein's first story collection, Apologies Forthcoming, had its debut on Saturday in her lovely garden at her home near where we live. Thus, we made a point of stopping by to enjoy the moment, commune with her friends, and taste some delicious food.

Here, Xujun with one of my very closest of friends, none other than the hubby, Jeff Stamps, appropriately attired in the T-shirt that matches his vehicle.

May this book party, X, be your first of many. And, to my readers: I've read the collection and recommend it without reservation. Original and compelling.

Apologies Forthcoming by Xujun Eberlein

Reciprocal interview at inside-out china.

Four years ago, I joined Zoetrope, the online writers community started by Francis Ford Coppola. I hope the day comes when I can thank him in person. None of us knows the number of writers who've benefited from his sponsoring this free, immensely useful space where writers exchange reviews of work-in-progress, pass along writing and publishing tips, and provide endless encouragement to one another. One requirement of Zoetrope is this: for every story you submit, you must review five others. I was getting a bit discouraged with my initial reviews (the first stack is assigned, after that you can choose) when, anxious to submit one of my own stories for dissection, I encountered Xujun Eberlein's "Swimming with Mao." I hate quoting myself (sort of :) but all this time later, I stand by what I wrote then: "This is a magnificent story, well rendered...and will be published. Good luck!"

(Clears throat) Right again. That story does not appear in its original form in Apologies Forthcoming, this fine  collection by Xujun. But "Feathers," its cousin, does, and it alone is worth buying this book. Never mind that the book won the Third Annual Tartts Fiction Award, which is how this volume came to print. With my laudatory review of Xujun's work, we struck up a friendship. Learning that we lived only a few miles apart, we agreed to meet in the garden of the Newton Public Library one sunny October day. Since then, we've visited each other's gardens but...mine pale next to hers. For example, the three-summers'-long-in-its-building "Chinese Garden Wall" as Xujun and her husband, Bob, call it:

What impresses me most about Xujun's work is not her fine writing or her rare eye for the unusual twist or that she's writing about a subject most of us know nothing about: growing up during the Cultural Revolution in China. It's that she's in the small, elite group of prize-winning writers who are not native speakers in the language that they write. Born in Chongqing, China, she moved to the US in 1988, earned her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from MIT, worked as a software developer, then chucked it all only a few years ago to write. Her list of publications and awards is significant. Just a few weeks ago, she won an Artist's Fellowship from the Massachusetts Arts Council.

Xujun is currently doing a "virtual blog tour" (see below for explanation); today is my turn. Since others are reviewing her book and asking her traditional questions that writers get once they cross the line to "author," I decided to query her about the connection between gardening and writing, passions we share:

You're doing a blog tour with your new book. Could you explain what this is and why it's advantageous for authors?

It is an experiment – so I’m not sure how advantageous it is yet. We'll see. A blog book tour is a low-cost alternative for a physical book tour, which I'm sure you have more experience with it than I do. In a blog tour, a writer traverses from blog to blog instead of city to city during a concentrated period.

Blogs that participate in the tour are referred as "stops." At each stop the blogger either interviews the author-on-tour or reviews the book or does both. The idea is mutual promotion as both sides are motivated to drive traffic to each stop. Ideally a participating blog gets exposure from the author's network and the author gets exposed to the blog's readers. Seems a good idea, right? However, in reality things don’t always work that well. For example, the topic of the book may not be attractive to the blog's readers; blog readers are not necessarily book lovers [ed. note: mine are!]; popular blogs are difficult to book while eager bloggers might not have much of a readership yet, etc. So, while a blog book tour does not cost the author much other than lots of organization and preparation time, it may or may not be effective.

A main advantage of a physical book tour is that its stops usually take place at bookstores or literary bars or someplace with a similar nature, which means the audience is book lovers. But such a tour is expensive and most small presses are not able to organize let alone pay for these tours. Everything has two sides, as ancient Chinese wisdom believes.

"A collaboration of the self I am with the self I was"

Last night, our friends at Karma hosted Freddy Frankel as he read from In a Stone's Hollow (Fairweather, 2007).

After retiring as head of psychiatry at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital a dozen years ago, Freddy studied poetry, joined a writers workshop, and started writing poems, many drawn from notes he'd made as a young man fighting the Nazis. (He'd left medical school to volunteer to serve in the South African Army, lying about his age to get in.) The poems resulting from opening his wartime notebook again sixty years later "reflect a collaboration of the self I am with the self I was."

In less than an hour, this fine poet imparted a comprehensive history of South Africa, relayed his own journey from his homeland to Boston, and held a packed room motionless as he read...except for when we were crying.

It's become a custom to shout a slogan at the end of Freddy's readings: "Freddy rocks!" He does. At 84 and no doubt he will at 104. He told me that he'd just seen a show of 18 portraits of "super-centenarians" - people over 110, one of whom finished his Ph.D. at 106!

Here's one poem (in the language of poetry, a villanelle) that I loved:

15 March 1945

The Appenines

Should God have quit Creation on day five,
those birds, those waters spellbound in the bay!
Men hunting men in mountains to survive

we ask for mercy as we run, shrivel
under cover while bullets ricochet.
Should God have quite Creation on day five--

day six He made a man, so sure he'd thrive;
now look, we bag torn body parts each day,
men hunting men in mountains to survive!

Some luckless soldiers won't get out alive,
still young they'll change back to dirt and clay.
Should God have quite Creation on day five.

In he widespread killing, the snowfall driven,
peace drags, sinking on its unploughed way--
men hunting men in mountains to survive

under this hell's dome. I've panicked and I've
embraced Him, cursed Him for this blood-iron fray.
Should God have quit Creation on day five,
men hunting men in mountains to survive.

Margaret Fullerenes - The Film - Friday, May 23

Delighted to share this good news: filmmakers Ron Mortara and Kim Romano will join our Margaret Fuller birthday gathering at Mount Auburn Cemetery this coming Friday, May 23 (meet inside front gates at 8 AM, then proceed to the Fuller lot on Pyrola Path).

Ron will film, Kim (check out the trailer for her film Muriel) will do sound. "We" [she smiles toward Ron] plan to make a very short film about this gathering. The "script" goes something like this: We'll take a quick tour of the Fuller graves, I'll read from Fuller's work, anyone moved to speak will do so, and we'll end with John Halamka playing a mourning song on his Shakuhachi (Japanese flute).

I had the chance to work with Ron three years ago on his film, The Beat. Ron used his knowledge as an ex-neurosurgeon for this imaginative piece in which a scientist discovers that the same part of the brain that recognizes rhythm is responsible for violence. In the film, I played the scientist's artist-wife. We filmed in my friend Emily's painting studio. Here's Ron on the set of The Beat.

For those who love water, whales, sailboats, and beautiful essays, you must see Ron's short, HUNGER ANGER LOVE PLAY, his meditation on what a whale might be thinking.

Local readers and those in Boston this Friday, please, all welcome to join.

Book Launch 2.0: "My blog. I'm guessing no one reads it"

Struggling and/or successful authors, bloggers, and anyone else trying to get the word out about what they're doing, ahoy. This video by Dennis Cass pretty much summarizes what it means to be lost in today's world. Make that Today 2.0.

April '08 book club: Old School

Oooops, forgive me. I missed the post on Old School by Tobias Wolff, the pick of the Fiction Book Club for April. I have an excuse. I couldn't attend due to work-related travel - not even a vacation. The group, I am told, liked the book very much, as did I, if only because it takes place in my hometown. I recognized the school (The Hill School, then a private boys' school educating the likes of James Baker, a 1948 alum and this year's graduation speaker), the "village" (Pottstown, Pennsylvania, a borough in actuality), and even the picture on the cover of The Hill School dining hall, where I first ate broccoli with hollandaise sauce. My friend, Mary Hartman, lived at The Hill because her father taught there.

Wolff's book is about belonging and authenticity and how simple smudgings of the truth can result in massive consequences. That the book is also about three authors and about students as writers made it even more appealing. The writers in question were "names" who visit the school for the annual lecture, having chosen in advance the work of one student to celebrate: Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway. The send-up of Rand is hilarious and refreshing, given how truly venal Rand's view of humanity is. The appearance or lack thereof of Hemingway is the trope around which the story unwinds. Good stuff. Well done, Mr. Wolff. I bet we passed each other on High Street when you went off-campus and perhaps you were even at the dance where I wore my first black velvet gown.

More from Endless Knots writers - Roland and Ron

In History Rechanneled, Roland Merullo reviews Tony Horwitz's A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World in today's Boston Globe. Master of the beginning and end, Roland's conclusion (I posted final words from his Agni essay, Visions of Gerard, yesterday) five stars Horwitz's book:

...Which only serves to prove the author's point. Our story, our real story, is as painful, shameful, and grim as it is uplifting and grand. We have doctored the events of the past to make ourselves feel good about them. All cultures employ this collective denial mechanism, ignoring crimes and failures both ancient and recent in the name of an upbeat patriotism. It makes you wonder what we will say about ourselves 100 years from now. And it makes you think that "A Voyage Long and Strange" - disturbing, honest, wonderfully written, and heroically researched - should be required reading in every high school in the land.

Roland Merullo's political novel, "American Savior," will be published this summer.

And Ron Currie's pictured in today's NY Times SundayStyles at the NYPL Young Lions event. Unfortunately, the Times doesn't run these photos online...but the subhead today on the "Evening Hours" section where a full page of NY nightlife photos runs each week is "Town and Gown." An inspiring aspect of Ron's story is that he is just a writer. No college degree, no MFA. Just a writer.

NYPL Young Lion Currie in pictures

As per below

Before

Accepting

Ron signing for Brian O'Byrne, actor who read Ron's story, "Indian Summer"

Sierra Currie, Ron's niece, and Aaron Eckhart, Ron's fan

 

Zoetropers David Fromm, Anne Elliott, Don Capone, moi

 

 

Ron Currie: Young Lions Fiction Awardee 2008!

NYPL lion from ForgottonDelights.com - thanks! Event photos to come...Photo of Barbara Currie by David Gerard Fromm.

On the steps of the New York Public Library at 42nd Street sit two massive marble lions. My mother loved her joke about them, told it frequently: They roar whenever a virgin walks by. Last night they did roar when Ron Currie won the NYPL’s Young Lions Fiction Award for God is Dead.

Actor Ethan Hawke and a group of his friends (Rick Moody, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, and Hannah McFarland) started the award in 2001 for writers under 35, making Ron the eighth winner. Hawke was MC in the Bartos Forum of “this wonderful building,” a banquet hall with a glass "saucer dome" ceiling and marble walls. We sat at round tables, ours all the way to the left in front of the stage, the one with the Ron Currie tent card. At tables next to ours, the other nominees: Ellen Litman (The Last Chicken in America); Peter Nathaniel Malae (Teach the Free Man); Dinah Mengetsu (The Beautiful Thing that Heaven Bears); and Emily Mitchell (The Last Summer of the World).

Hawke was exuberant, congratulating the nominees regardless of the outcome. Ron's mother, Barbara, had brought along a stunning picture of her husband , Ron Currie Sr., who passed away last December.

Four actors read excerpts from the works of each nominee, Ron’s “Indian Summer” was first, read by Brian O’Byrne, star of “Coast of Utopia.” Brian took a wide stance, right hand in his pocket, sometimes carving the air, weight shifting, knee bending, leaning into the tough parts of the story adding more punch to the raw prose, his mouth just an inch or two from the mic, dressed in black jeans and a charcoal sweater much as the characters in the story might have worn, he not that different in age from them. The story is awful and riveting, the same excerpt Ron read at the book party last summer (well, apparently, I never revealed in these pages that we hosted a book party for him here last July when the book came out so this link will have to do). "Indian Summer" will stand as the emblem of hopelessness, hilarious yet so raw that each time I hear it, I wish Ron had never written it because of what it must have taken out of him to do so. But, horrible as it is, it fits the book as a whole - and everyone lunges for it, readers and reviewers alike.

The other excerpts were wonderful - two emigré stories, one Russian, one Ethiopian, a jail story that had Ron’s not preceded it would have been even more powerful, and a portrait of Edward Steichen - all beautifully written, as one would expect from nominees for this award, humorous, and all well read by Hawke, Amanda Peet, and Michael Shannon - but when Brian finished, I felt sorry for the other nominees. Ron’s work is a different kind of original and that, I’m certain, is why he won.

The judges considered 142 books, chose five as finalists, said Paul LeClerc, NYPL president, before receiving “the envelope, please.” Not a second between his opening it and his “Ron Currie.” We erupted, we being his mom, Barbara, his niece Sierra (who got to have her picture taken with actor Aaron Eckhart), and three of my Zoetrope friends - Anne Elliott, Don Capone, and David Fromm. Congratulations is a small word for what this means to Ron and for his career. And lest I overlook one detail: Prize = $10,000 for Ron; $1000 for each of the other finalists.

See also: Don Capone's Hit List, Paper Cuts (NYTimes book blog), NYPL Young Lions site, GalleyCat

Pub day

Writing's rewards are protracted - a draft, 800 more drafts, waiting, acceptance, corrections, pdfs (used to be page proofs that took weeks to arrive), publication, waiting, hard copy in hand.

Two waiting last night:

The Handbook of High-Performance Virtual Teams, all 764 pages of it. Big cheers to editors Jill Nemiro, Michael Beyerlein, Lori Bradley, Susan Beyerlein - and to my fifty authors who never met. Not even a mega conference call. Virtualteamspedia. And you can download tools, frameworks and even a spreadsheet with a taxonomy for all the significant studies on virtual team leadership. Our bit is last, The Virtual, Networked Organization.

"Feeling Numb," my essay on MS in Ars Medica, the medicine, arts, and humanities journal from Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. Will post once scanned. Have read several stunning pieces so far - "Two Minutes with Zack: A Found Poem" by Zachary Faceman and Ben McGren, and Myra Sklarew's "Lie Perfectly Still."

"The" handbook for virtual teams

It's out. And it's got lots of useful information, says she, co-author of "The Virtual Networked Organization," the final chapter in this highly collaborative volume. You can order it here and read on for the press release.

How big is Boston?

Geraldine Brooks's People of the Book is hardly about Boston except insofar as the main character visits on her odyssey to understand the ancient "Sarajevo hagaddah's" history yet she makes an observation on p. 134 about our beloved city that can only make us smile:

Sometimes, I think if you took all the universities and all the hospitals out of greater Boston, you'd be able to fit what's left into about six city blocks.

Literary agent on collaboration

My Google alert set to collaboration typically brings news of yet another tech geegaw for collaborating faster, more easily, better than anyone could possibly imagine, etc. But today comes a post from Miriam Goderich of Dystel & Goderich, the literary agency handling my friend Lisa McMann's new book that hit the NY Times Best-seller list on April 6 (Wake) and another title: Dreams from My Father by one Barack Obama (heard'a him, peut-etre?).

Goderich's points are excellent guidelines for any collaboration, not just for writers. Quick summary:

1. Think twice before agreeing to the collaboration as it is likely to be more difficult than you can possibly imagine.

2. Clarify each person's role - key to any collaborative activity, as lack of role clarity is more times than not the cause of project failure based on our research.

3. Get the legalities straight from the get-go - copyright holder, financial arrangements and the like. 'Nuf said.

4. Engage your most mature self, the writer you wish you were when you start screaming at your collaborator, which typically happens first in your own head.

5. Be prepared to walk away if it turns out to be a disaster. Nothing's worth it. Not even a best-seller.

Thanks, Miriam. Excellent list.

The invisible planet

A little bit of crowing (again). About twenty years ago, an editor at Routledge & Kegan Paul, the British publisher, asked if we'd consider doing a more "global" version of our book, Networking, which had come out a few years earlier. We agreed and, in the process of the revision, we changed the theme of the book from "Another America," where we examined non-institutional networks working on a variety of issues principally in the US to "the Invisible Planet," which extended the same idea to the multinational setting. Eventually, this book was published in the US by Viking Penguin as The Networking Book and translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil for the 1992 Earth Summit. Last week, I received this nice note from a reader who'd found me on LinkedIn. It's affirming to know that work done so many years ago still reaches people. Thanks, VA, for this lovely note - and what a great idea to republish this book as an eBook. Let me add that to the list.

Hello Jessica,

First thank you for adding me into your network. It is an honor to connect with one of the leading pioneers (oxy-moron?) of the networking universe.

I am back into reading a classic book once again, The Networking Book...I wish that it can be reprinted or offered as an Ebook, so people don't take the Networking tools available today, like Linkedin for granted.

The evolution is more than astonishing..and you have clearly displayed through your words in this valuable book. While many lines in the book resonate with me, one hit the core and you expressed so eloquently: 'There is nothing to conquer on the Invisible Planet: there are only problems to solve, using personal resourcefulness as the provider of solutions...'

I just wanted to share that with you..for it confirms my path and the  venture that I am so vehemently involved.

Continue with your pioneering or lead the way. Looking forward to connecting with you at the levels necessary to elevate the Invisible Planet where it needs to be.

Respectfully,
...

Read this book: Incantation by Alice Hoffman

Many years ago, my literary agent at the time invited me to a party in Cambridge at the home of "Alice Hoffman," whose work he also handled. I put her name in quotes because she was already a phenom and I was still a long year away from seeing a book with my name on it in print. Memories of that party have stayed with me over the years, including a conversation I had with Alice that night. In retrospect, it was really nothing extraordinary but as a young writer in the company of another young writer who'd already made a mark, what she said left an indelible memory such that I can even quote it today. But I never read her work.

Then serendipitously, a friend who occasionally sends a note to someone saying "meet my friend, Jessica" sent such a note to Alice last week. In the volley of emails that preceded it, I'd mentioned that I was reading People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks's new novel about the Sarajevo haggadah, the order of service for Passover, that survived for centuries even as the Jews it belonged to did not. Alice replied a short while later, saying that if I were interested in the Inquisition, I might want to read her book, Incantation.

Which I just finished and which I implore you to read. It's short, gorgeous, gripping, grotesque, and, in large measure, true. Not true in the way that the characters were historical figures but true in the way that evil sweeps through cultures, insanely, burning books and bodies and believers of the wrong faith. The intimacy of young girls, inseparable friends, smashed by jealousy and betrayal; sudden immutable love; ancient rituals practiced in secret; the genesis of genocide; and what would otherwise be called magic but instead is deep reverence for the beauty of the natural world and its ability to transport us even in moments without any light to luminous higher realms ... all this in 150 pages, beginning with what must be one of the strongest openings in the history of the novel:

If every life is a river, then it's little wonder that we do not even notice the changes that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea. One day you look around and nothing is familiar, not even your own face.

My name once meant daughter, granddaughter, friend, sister, beloved. Now those words mean only what their letters spell out: Star in the night sky. Truth in the darkness.

I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I'd be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.

Thank you, Alice. Now on to more of your work. And seriously, friends. Read it.

No books in the whole apartment?

I generally like the-back-of-the-book essays in The New York Times Book Review, have been composing one in my head for a long time: “How I Came to Learn that Carlos Fuentes Loves Bluefish.” Alas, I cannot give this away before writing it so, in the meantime, today’s essay in the Book Review, It's Not You, It's Your Books, prompts this post.

Dump him/her, it says, if your reading tastes are not compatible. Fortunately, my hubby and I didn’t make this a criterion, lest those shelves of science fiction - which he regards as something close to sacred and I’ve never gotten past Page Two of - would have rent us asunder. That said, I made this compatibility a key magnet between the main characters of a novel.

Read Rachel Donadio’s piece if this difference in taste troubles you.

Meanwhile, this tidbit from the annals of relationship history as contributed by my friend, Hannah, who spent many a year searching for her true love, a mission successfully completed two Junes past.

Before the Internet, she was a major contributor to the income stream of the personal pages of The Village Voice and The New York Review of Books. Her ads weren’t turning much up so I jumped in with my aforementioned pencil (previous post), wrote what I regarded as a killer ad, which naturally turned up many suitors (including a few suits). None was so amusing as the attorney whom she went on one date with, during which he talked about their respective summer homes and how wonderful their shuttling between the two would be. Said he’d call her the next day (remember the phone? that communication device that people once used?). Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. And then three months later he left a voicemail, said he was sorry, that he couldn’t continue the relationship.

Back to the point of this post. The drill went like this: Hannah would call to tell me about an impending date, then report in when she got home, on occasion the following morning. We’d do quick  post-assessments including checklist questions like whether he held the door, picked up the check, appeared to have changed his clothes since the ’60s, and of course whether he was cute, funny, and smart, without which...One night, around 9 o’clock, early for the post-date call unless the guy was a real loser, Hannah was whispering into the phone.

“I’m at his apartment.”

“Wow, things went that well,” I replied. “Where is he?”

“He’s in the bathroom but he doesn’t have any books.”

“No books in the whole apartment?”

“None.”

“Get out.”

She did. And guess what? The guy she married has books, is something of an expert on Muriel Sparks, an English professor even.

Mother and Daughter Pastan, reading, together

My friend Meg emailed last week: "Wondering—I know this is last-minute—if you’d be interested in going to hear Linda Pastan read on Monday night at Blacksmith House. She’s a kick-butt poet and is reading with her daughter, Rachel, whose novel came out (with great reviews) last year."

Truth: I'd never heard of either of them and this is shameful, as I learned last night. What talents. Rachel read first from her new novel, Lady of the Snakes, which begins with Jane, a Russian literature scholar, in labor with her first child. Linda, author of many books of poetry and former Poet Laureate of Maryland, followed with complementary readings -- first from Queen of a Rainy Country and then from her other works, including a new manuscript -- about giving birth to Rachel, about family, about the window to the future closing (not precisely the words).

These were readings where (this doesn't always happen) the mind sparked, the heart beat a little faster than is comfortable, and where eyes leaked as words pulled together, sentences completed themselves, whole paragraphs took shape, and, when I left, an entire piece was ready to be written. Inspirational, motivational, and a strong reminder of how much we all have to say.

Thank you, Linda, Rachel, and Meg.

Askold and Sven together again

Two of Boston’s great literati (and my friends, which makes them even greater, natch) team up this Thursday night for readings in the Newtonville Books series. Askold Melnyczuk will read from his new novel, The House of Widows, Sven Birkerts from his new work, The Art of Time in Memoir, both published by the powerful little Graywolf Press.

The two mens’ lives intersect most notably through Agni, the literary magazine now published at Boston University. Askold, director of the writing program at University of Massachusetts/Boston and publisher with Alex Johnson of Arrowsmith Books, founded the magazine in 1972 while a young student at Antioch College; Sven, recently named director of the Bennington graduate writing program, has been its editor since 2003.

See you there: 7 PM, Thursday, March 20, Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut Street, Newtonville, Mass.

Photo: Askold reading from Ambassador of the Dead, Fiction Book Club, Feb 15, 2005, my house

March '08 book club: The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa

For those following my Fiction Book Club posts, you know that I've revised my policy (hammered out over many smoke-filled, backroom nights). Instead of just announcing the book, I'm now saying something about the book club's response after we meet. As is the case with most good policies, I failed to observe it in the very first month after my announcement. The reason will be revealed a few paragraphs down. Meanwhile, this month we read (and discussed last night ) Mario Vargas Llosa's The Bad Girl translated by Edith Grossman, who's ported much of his work and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's (among other Latin American greats) into English. I'm including Grossman's picture here from a Washington Post interview that she gave with another of her translatees, Mayra Montero. Here Grossman explains her process, or at least comments on it. Why include her picture in this post? As thanks for Love in the Time of Cholera, this book, and many others. A life of translation, exquisite work, of which The Bad Girl is yet another.  

We were missing a couple of our most stalwart members last night (rumor has it that this was the first club ever missed by two of our co-founders, Tom and Emily) yet we survived a discussion in which seven  loved the book, two hated it, and one was mezzamezz. I loved it. In just a few hundred pages, Vargas Llosa manages to span three or four decades, fixate the reader (at least this one) on an obsessive love affair, accurately portray a Paris and London in 1968 that I remember vividly, document Peruvian politics, and bring onto the stage characters who are complex, contradictory, and engaging - just like my friends. Which brings me to this: when I said I knew someone like "the bad girl," I was queried as to who she was. But first: the bad girl (Lily, among other names) is a disturbed, beautiful, exploitative "user," the kind of woman who collects rich husbands. The good boy, Ricardito, as he calls himself in his interior dialogue, becomes fascinated with her when they are still children. Circumstance and coincidence cross their paths over and over through their lives, sometimes by mere happenstance, other times because one or the other, mostly him, seeks the other out.

So whom have I known like the bad girl? I had a gorgeous and brilliant dear friend whose self-esteem and insecurity were so pronounced that she made repeatedly bad choices in men until the right one came along in her mid-30s and she woke up. The bad girl of this novel is not a sympathetic character until you lop off the first syllable - and then her pathetic-ness  is overbearing. She thinks a rich man is going to solve her "problem," provide her security, her problem and insecurity being nothing more than what we're all stuck with - being human. I'm about to lose the whole morning if I don't stop here. Read it and tell me what you think.

And, as promised, why did I not post about the last book? Because I couldn't get past about ten pages, which will make the Cormac McCarthy enthusiasts click right out of this blog. The Road, which uncharacteristically I will not even provide a link to, is another of McCarthy's indulgences. We all know the man can write and that he can write about a father's love for a son (ten pages proves it) but beyond that...good lord, McCarthy. Have you ever written a positive paragraph about a woman? Couldn't you have reduced this to about ten pages? I do not understand this writer's appeal. Or what would possess a writer to spend his/her time this way? With this kind of talent - and living in the times we do that call for all of us to pitch in and help, why are you wasting your talent this way? And why do you get awards for it?

Next up for April '08: Old School by Tobias Wolff, which I can't wait to read. It's set at The Hill School in my hometown of Pottstown, Penna., where I went to my first cotillion and to which I wore my first black velvet dress.

Collaboration 2.0

It's out. David Coleman and Stewart Levine's new book, Collaboration 2.0. We were delighted to write the Foreword to this book. Here it is in its entirety (for those who fail to buy the book - oh, no!):

Collaboration 2.0
Foreword by Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps

At the Seventh International Conference on Complex Systems in 2007, Barbara Jasny, Senior Editor at Science, cited a statistic that provoked a collective “wow” from the audience of complexity scientists. The current record for the largest number of collaborators submitting a paper to her prestigious journal? 350 [corrected update, 445].

Jasny pointed to the truth that reigns in all domains these days: once the province of isolated geniuses, good work and breakthrough ideas congregate on the playground of those who can play well together. In our highly interconnected world, everything interacts with everything else and in order to understand—or accomplish—anything, we need to work together better. And, typically today, that means making use of innovative technologies and becoming adept at the human side of collaboration.

Not long ago, the word collaborator had a bad connotation in Europe, implying working with the forces of evil during World War II. But in a relatively short amount of time, collaboration has reclaimed its original meaning—“co-labor,” to work together—and has become a popular term even in countries where it was anathema as recently as a few decades ago.

Now in North America and South, in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the exquisite nations of Australia and New Zealand, to collaborate means that you know what you’re doing. The trick is to do that supremely well.

When we were interviewing executives for our book Virtual Teams, nearly every conversation ended with a variation on the same idea: “You know, it’s 90% people and 10% technology.” This phrase has become something of a slogan for us and when a technologist has the capacity to speak from the people side, we always take notice.

We first met David Coleman a number of years ago at a conference on—take a guess—collaboration. He impressed us with his knowledge and his sense of humor, both vital to collaboration, and we’ve followed his work since, depending on him to be up on whatever was happening in that world. Invariably, he stresses that people are the ones using technology and that how and for what purposes they use it are far more important than the technology itself.

When we learned that David had teamed up with Stewart Levine to write the “next rev” of collaboration, we were intrigued and it took us approximately one second to agree to write this Foreword.

Stewart’s grasp of the people side of the equation is comprehensive and practical. Good psychology, good people skills, and good common sense combine in his many ideas for how to make collaboration work.

The offerings in collaboration technology can appear like items in a supermarket, all the little cans bearing only tiny variations in ingredients to distinguish them. What David helps us see are the signs marking the aisles, pointing out the categories that we need to consider before making our choices, then applying expert stars to the ones he regards as best picks.

On the people side, Stewart enables us to zero in on the essence of collaboraton. At the beginning, during the middle, and in the final analysis, collaboration is about communication. Prone to wanting to make our views known, we fail to listen. And listening across boundaries is the most difficult behavior of all. The borders that separate us stand in the way of our humanity and we need to dissolve them. The ability to truly hear what others have to say is the most powerful form of communication, Stewart writes. We agree.

And though the word business appears in this book some 117 times, it is far more than a manual for business. As our scientist friends indicate, our world and indeed our future depend upon collaboration, which the authors make clear in their final pages. From global warming to alleviation of poverty to stemming the population explosion to reducing the threat of “weapons of mass effects,” the human family needs to learn how to work together better very quickly and to become adept at using the best tools for doing so.

This book is your GPS for collaboration now and in the years to come. Open it anywhere and you’ll learn something. Apply what you’ve learned and your work will become easier—and our hopes for the generations to come will soar.

—Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps, CEO and Chief Scientist respectively of NetAge, a consultancy that helps organizations work together better, and co-authors of many books, including The Age of the Network and Virtual Teams.

Stone Creek - advance reading copy

I won't do this often as it's very risky but I am so enthralled with Stone Creek, the forthcoming novel by Victoria Lustbader, that I want you all to know about it. The book doesn't come out until late May -- and I'm only a third of the way through -- but if your reaction is anything like mine and that of the editors at HarperCollins (as recorded in the book's ARC, advance reading copy), you will love this book. Beautifully written, it's a multi-dimensional love story with passionate characters, including a grieving husband with a young child, and a woman who, well, I'm not certain what's ultimately happening with Lily, but she's a keen observer of life, of her husband, of a younger man, of children...I wish I could spend the day reading.

Bravo to Victoria, the first of what I expect will be multiple kudos to the author, whom I met thanks to her talented husband, the writer Eric Van Lustbader.

The Liar's Diary - Blog Day

This post is about the power of blogging. Today more than 300 (not sure how many more by this point) bloggers are teaming up to promote the release in paperback of The Liar's Diary by Patry Francis. Susan Henderson, writer, editor, friend extraordinaire to Patry Francis, is part of the organizing effort that is taking advantage of the incredible power of links among bloggers to mark this as a day in blogging history.

Every writer deserves a little help from her friends; Patry's dogged determination to be published, especially so, as she was working the dog jobs many writers turn to while their imaginations spin and their alarm clocks wake them earlier and earlier each morning until her fate turned. Her book was picked up but then her diagnosis with an aggressive cancer just as she signed her first contract. Thus, hundreds of us are hitting the keys today to spread the word. Her publisher, Penguin (for one book, also Jeff's and mine) is offering a discount through this blogging initiative.

From Sue Henderson's site:

Here are links to THE LIAR'S DIARY at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Powell's. You can also buy directly from Penguin to save 15% (after you add the book to your cart, just enter the word PATRY in the coupon code field and click ‘update cart’ to activate the discount).

Thank you, Sue, and all the other creative minds behind this initiative. May we see the book right at the top of the charts and happy blogging day to you, Patry.

Update: The number of bloggers covering this story is growing by the hour. Absolutely incredible to watch this roll through the 'sphere.

Could BookCrossing lead to world peace?

How many meetings have you been in where someone says sarcastically (and as if you're the organization's idiot): "Well" (huff, huff) "we're not trying to solve world peace?" Well, huff, huff, some of us--call me naive--would like to. Thus, the second in my new series on things that might (see "Why Twitter may lead to world peace").

Thanks to Nathan Brandsford's cheeky and helpful blog for writers (he's a literary agent at Curtis Brown), I've learned about BookCrossing, the brainchild of Ron Hornbaker. In the effort to "make the whole world a library," Ron came up with the idea to create a website where people register books (which means obtaining a "BCID"--BookCrossing ID) then leave them in public places. Someone else picks up the book, notices that it's got this special marking on it, then goes to the BookCrossing site and posts where the book has traveled. That person, in turn, drops it elsewhere and long/short in its six or so short years of existence, BookCrossing has registered 633,242 (with me) members who've registered some 4.5 million books traveling around the world.

Of course, there is a huge online community that's grown up around BookCrossing with members stretching from the Antarctic to the Arctic (may they forever remain cold).

Incredibly, the second most traveled book? A Passage to India by EM Forster, within which is my favorite phrase from all literature: "Only connect," my Rx for world peace.

Text me your novel

I suppose it was inevitable but frankly it's never crossed my mind: writing a novel on my phone. Today's NY Times gives  front page space to Norimitsu Onishi's very good reporting, "Thumbs Race as Japan's Best Sellers Go Cellular."

That's right. Of the top ten best selling novels in Japan in 2007, five were written on cell phones.

Writers, get thee-selves to the thumb exercise gym. Writing your brilliant prose on your phone is the NBT, and if you don't know what that is, click here (oh, no, it's not there: Next Big Thing):

Whatever their literary talents, cellphone novelists are racking up the kind of sales that most more experienced, traditional novelists can only dream of.

One such star, a 21-year-old woman named Rin, wrote “If You” over a six-month stretch during her senior year in high school. While commuting to her part-time job or whenever she found a free moment, she tapped out passages on her cellphone and uploaded them on a popular Web site for would-be authors.

Turns out that writing via this method owes its success in part to "packet death." Huh? This special form of electronic extinction was befalling Japanese cellphone users when their text messaging bills were in the $1000 range. When providers changed their billing methods from charging by the message, the prevailing model here in the US, to charging flat fees for unlimited data transmission, they made it economical for people to post via their phones. Young writers, who got their start posting novels to their blogs, quickly made the transition to writing on their phones.

Thus, a new genre was born. Only the publishing establishment is not so sure it is a genre, which is where the literary tension comes in. Or not. The books tend not to have any, according to the article. Simple love stories, written with a lot of text abbreviations, little character development, and very short sentences seem to be the style.

I better brush up my texting skills. Or i btr brsh up my txtg skls.

Very interesting article. Worth reading.

February '08 book club: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Next up the much talked about Cormac McCarthy book, The Road.

The way in which I'm handling the Fiction Book Club's reading here is not useful. Each month, I've been posting what we're going to read and since I'm usually screeching into our meetings while reading the last few pages, I never have anything useful to say about the next month's book. It would be better if I posted after I've read the book and could include opinion...so going forward, I'll have to change my evil ways.

Meanwhile, since I trust his judgment completely, I'm quoting Dennis Lehane here from the review that he wrote for Amazon. It's much longer than this ... and had he not mentioned the father's love for his son by the fourth sentence, I doubt that I could even open this book:

Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work.

The Majesty of Your Loving

Many years ago, we had the chance to become friends with Olivia and Hob Hoblitzelle, beacons of clear thinking in the fields of psychotherapy and spiritual development. I liked them immediately when we met - Olivia's calm presence even when everyone around us seemed to be going nuts, Hob's sense of humor.

To my young eyes, their home was everything an abode should be - simple, beautiful, and with a Japanese garden, this before everyone had a couple of bonzai in the kitchen and a Buddha or two in the backyard. Their children were close to adolescence; ours weren't even born. I truly admired them. Then, as is the case with so many who influence us, our lives drifted off into our futures.

About five or so years ago, I was in a yoga class at Kripalu, the yoga center in Western Massachusetts, and noticed a beautiful woman, intent on her practice, a few mats from me. It was Olivia. We spoke briefly, long enough for her to tell me that Hob was quite ill, that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and that she had come to the yoga center for rest and retreat. Some months after that, I read in the paper that Hob had died.

Now the news that Olivia has captured their seven-year journey in a book whose title promises many gifts: The Majesty of Your Loving: A Couple's Journey through Alzheimer's. And there's a website that summarizes their story, gives information on how to arrange a reading or workshop with Olivia, and, of course, provides additional resources.

For my discouraged writer friends (and all Antiochians)

I love stories like this as they involve many favorite things - writers who keep at it even when rejected, food, honoring those who've died...and my alma mater, which has not died, Antioch.

If you get The Sunday New York Times, you'll be able to read the original. Otherwise (or if so inclined, even if), read Alex Witchel's nice recap of The I Hate to Cook Book author Peg Bracken's life (she died in October '07). Antiochians: she graduated in 1940. Here's a snippet:

The men who ruled the world in the late 1950s, or at least six of the men who ruled publishing, rejected Peg Bracken’s manuscript, “The I Hate to Cook Book.” It would never sell, they told her, because “women regard cooking as sacred.” It took a female editor at Harcourt Brace to look at the hundreds of easy-to-follow recipes wittily pitched at the indentured housewife and say, “Hallelujah!” Since its publication in 1960, Bracken’s iconic book, which celebrated the speedy virtues of canned cream-of-mushroom soup and chicken bouillon cubes, has sold more than three million copies. That helped lift her spirits, her daughter, Jo Bracken, said, about her $338 advance.

God is Dead: Book of the year--two time

Ron Currie Jr, is hot, hot, hot. Both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Richmond-Times Dispatch have named God is Dead as one of the Books of the Year. Here's what the Virginia paper, which called it "one of the five best books of the year," said today:

God Is Dead by Ron Currie Jr. (192 pages, Viking, $21.95). Undoubtedly one of the most original and imaginative short-story collections this year, Currie's interlocking tales take Nietzsche's famous proclamation to the extreme by conjuring a world trying to survive after the literal death of God in western Sudan. What follows is a bizarre blend of horror, fantasy and pitch-black comedy that includes melancholic dogs and child-worshipping cults -- all depicted in a highly contagious style.

And in case you don't remember verbatim my post (from last July)