What do we do now?
Three different friends texted me this question late last night, after I had turned the TV off; after I had said goodnight to my housemate, who insisted things might all look better in the morning; after I had tried to go to bed, listening to the Pray As You Go podcast and clutching my smartphone.
Last night I had nothing to tell them. This morning I'm thinking about at least two other times in my life when I looked in the bathroom mirror and thought: I have no idea how I'm supposed to get on with the rest of my life. How do I do this?
This is what I did then, so this is what I'm doing now:
I brushed my teeth.
I washed my face.
I made a list of small, essential tasks that feel manageable: 1. Renew my ACLU membership. 2. Put away my laundry. 3. Clean my bathroom. 4. Figure out next week's trip to New York.
I'll add more things to that list as I go, and take what satisfaction I can in ticking things off. I will pretend to feel normal — I will pretend to be "normal" — until it's no longer pretending.
The terror we all live with, past the basic needs of food, water and shelter, is that someone will tell us, "You're not welcome here." Half the country told the other half that last night. I'm seeing a lot of posts on social media this morning to the effect of "this happens every four years, get over it," but that's not right. This is something new in my lifetime. The winning candidate didn't give us an inclusive, optimistic vision for the future; the best he could do was offer to rid us of whatever was scaring us.
I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm a college-educated white woman who supports herself. In the world of our President-Elect, I'm negligible — fat, unattractive, annoying and probably another "nasty woman" — but I'm not The Enemy. I'm not The Other.
But too many of my friends, in this new world, are The Other and even The Enemy. They're gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender. They're immigrants. They're people of color. They have families formed by adoption and love rather than by blood. They do good work through government agencies that may not exist six months from now. They live with pre-existing medical conditions they may lose their insurance for. They live and work in the inner cities, in places our new President-Elect describes as lawless jungles.
Last night, half the country told my friends that they can't be sure of their welcome here. That this is not their home. But this is their home, and this is my home and this is your home and for God's sake — literally, for God's sake — isn't that what America is supposed to be about?
This is still our home. The important, essential thing for all of us to do in the weeks and months ahead is to remember that and to behave that way. Say hello to your neighbors. Offer help to people who look like they need it. Volunteer. Join up. Speak out. Today, right now, look up the names and addresses of your Representative, your Senators, your local lawmakers and send them a note to say, "Here's who I am, here's what I care about." Seriously, introduce yourself. That's what I plan to do this morning.
We still have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. It has not perished.
These are organizations that can use your money in the months ahead:
American Civil Liberties Union
Matthew Shepard Foundation
National Council of La Raza
NAACP
NPR
Planned Parenthood
Southern Poverty Law Center
Hug your friends and family. I leave you with the wisdom of Lou Reed:
What's good?
Life's good
But not fair at all.
Wednesday, November 09, 2016
Sunday, November 06, 2016
Books 2-4: TRUE GRIT, I WISH I HAD A RED DRESS, and A TIME OF TORMENT
I've only recently come up with a good answer to the question, "What do you do?" That answer is, "I help people say what they mean." That's a big net that includes editing, writing, public relations and more — but it starts with listening, reading, and paying attention.
The "paying attention" is often the hardest part. As we gasp to the end of campaign season, I'm so distracted I feel hunted. Thank God I have stacks of books to retreat to. I'd have been very happy as a medieval monk, spending a month illuminating a single page.
It's November 6, and I've read four books of my 30-book challenge. The fourth book counts as both a reread and a book for work, which I'll explain below.
Book: TRUE GRIT by Charles Portis (1968)
Format: Trade paperback
How had I not read this book before? It was on the "supplemental reading" bookshelf of my fifth-grade classroom at Baylake Pines Elementary, I'm sure, along with Julie of the Wolves and Across Five Aprils and Where the Lilies Bloom and Island of the Blue Dolphins. Why didn't I read it? Did I assume that because it was a Western, it wasn't a book for girls? I am disappointed and indignant with my 10-year-old self, and can only imagine how different my life might have been if I'd read this book at a time when Mattie Ross could have been my role model. The 14-year-old narrator of this book pays attention to everything, has an opinion about most of it, and tells it all with every confidence in the reader's interest. Hell, it's not too late for her to be my role model now. Many thanks to Tommy Pluck for sending me this book.
Book: I WISH I HAD A RED DRESS by Pearl Cleage (2001)
Format: Trade paperback
Owned Since: October 2016
Last month I was part of a Facebook round-robin book giveaway that caused some anxiety and consternation among friends who groused about it being yet another stupid pyramid scheme. Well, yes, it was. But I got more than two dozen books out of it, and have since sent a couple of boxes of books off to friends who weren't as lucky, and have already read two books I would not otherwise have picked up. This was one of those books. Pearl Cleage is a playwright whose first novel, WHAT LOOKS LIKE CRAZY ON AN ORDINARY DAY, was an Oprah Book Club pick. I haven't read it, but this novel, her second, is set in the same world. It too is told in the first person, by Joyce, who runs a community center for at-risk teenaged girls and mothers in Idlewild, Michigan, which was a premier resort for the African-American community in the era of Jim Crow. Joyce is a widow striving to live a free life; I WISH I HAD A RED DRESS is a lovely book about how she manages to find new love and help her girls become independent women. I do wish I'd read the first book first, but it wasn't essential for this story.
Book: A TIME OF TORMENT by John Connolly (2016)
Format: PDF
Owned Since: October 2016 as is
It has been my privilege to work with John Connolly for several years now, offering general assistance and obnoxious advice on his extraordinary range of projects. A TIME OF TORMENT is the 14th novel to feature his tormented detective, Charlie Parker (or 15th, if you count the novella "The Reflecting Eye"). This read was both a re-read and for work, as I proofread the galleys for the UK paperback edition, to be published in February 2017. This is a series that continues to evolve in marvelous ways, and as familiar as I was with the story, it still gave me chills. (And a running joke about bathroom keys actually gets funnier every time I read it.)
Proofreading is not like other kinds of reading. It's more like sifting rice through a sieve, looking for stones. In fact, if you let yourself be drawn into a story while you're proofreading, you miss things. If you're paying attention to the story, your brain skims over mistakes and sees what you expect to see. Proofreading requires tricks, especially when it's a text you've seen several times, as this one was for me. I went through it forward, then I went through it backward. I moved from chapter heading to chapter heading to make sure the numbers were sequential and none were skipped. I searched for one particular character name that I knew had been misspelled in the galleys of the hardcover (where we did catch it).
It is almost impossible to publish a 125,000-word novel that is entirely free of errors. Some readers get indignant about this, and I share that indignation in the rare cases where it's obvious no one edited the book at all (a Southern literary novel I read last year, for example, where the main character mysteriously became ten whole years younger between one chapter and another). The goal is perfection, of course; but two or three typos in a 125,000-word book is an error rate most airline pilots would be okay with.
The "paying attention" is often the hardest part. As we gasp to the end of campaign season, I'm so distracted I feel hunted. Thank God I have stacks of books to retreat to. I'd have been very happy as a medieval monk, spending a month illuminating a single page.
It's November 6, and I've read four books of my 30-book challenge. The fourth book counts as both a reread and a book for work, which I'll explain below.
Book: TRUE GRIT by Charles Portis (1968)
Format: Trade paperback
Owned Since: October 2016
How had I not read this book before? It was on the "supplemental reading" bookshelf of my fifth-grade classroom at Baylake Pines Elementary, I'm sure, along with Julie of the Wolves and Across Five Aprils and Where the Lilies Bloom and Island of the Blue Dolphins. Why didn't I read it? Did I assume that because it was a Western, it wasn't a book for girls? I am disappointed and indignant with my 10-year-old self, and can only imagine how different my life might have been if I'd read this book at a time when Mattie Ross could have been my role model. The 14-year-old narrator of this book pays attention to everything, has an opinion about most of it, and tells it all with every confidence in the reader's interest. Hell, it's not too late for her to be my role model now. Many thanks to Tommy Pluck for sending me this book.
Book: I WISH I HAD A RED DRESS by Pearl Cleage (2001)
Format: Trade paperback
Owned Since: October 2016
Last month I was part of a Facebook round-robin book giveaway that caused some anxiety and consternation among friends who groused about it being yet another stupid pyramid scheme. Well, yes, it was. But I got more than two dozen books out of it, and have since sent a couple of boxes of books off to friends who weren't as lucky, and have already read two books I would not otherwise have picked up. This was one of those books. Pearl Cleage is a playwright whose first novel, WHAT LOOKS LIKE CRAZY ON AN ORDINARY DAY, was an Oprah Book Club pick. I haven't read it, but this novel, her second, is set in the same world. It too is told in the first person, by Joyce, who runs a community center for at-risk teenaged girls and mothers in Idlewild, Michigan, which was a premier resort for the African-American community in the era of Jim Crow. Joyce is a widow striving to live a free life; I WISH I HAD A RED DRESS is a lovely book about how she manages to find new love and help her girls become independent women. I do wish I'd read the first book first, but it wasn't essential for this story.
Book: A TIME OF TORMENT by John Connolly (2016)
Format: PDF
Owned Since: October 2016 as is
It has been my privilege to work with John Connolly for several years now, offering general assistance and obnoxious advice on his extraordinary range of projects. A TIME OF TORMENT is the 14th novel to feature his tormented detective, Charlie Parker (or 15th, if you count the novella "The Reflecting Eye"). This read was both a re-read and for work, as I proofread the galleys for the UK paperback edition, to be published in February 2017. This is a series that continues to evolve in marvelous ways, and as familiar as I was with the story, it still gave me chills. (And a running joke about bathroom keys actually gets funnier every time I read it.)
Proofreading is not like other kinds of reading. It's more like sifting rice through a sieve, looking for stones. In fact, if you let yourself be drawn into a story while you're proofreading, you miss things. If you're paying attention to the story, your brain skims over mistakes and sees what you expect to see. Proofreading requires tricks, especially when it's a text you've seen several times, as this one was for me. I went through it forward, then I went through it backward. I moved from chapter heading to chapter heading to make sure the numbers were sequential and none were skipped. I searched for one particular character name that I knew had been misspelled in the galleys of the hardcover (where we did catch it).
It is almost impossible to publish a 125,000-word novel that is entirely free of errors. Some readers get indignant about this, and I share that indignation in the rare cases where it's obvious no one edited the book at all (a Southern literary novel I read last year, for example, where the main character mysteriously became ten whole years younger between one chapter and another). The goal is perfection, of course; but two or three typos in a 125,000-word book is an error rate most airline pilots would be okay with.
Wednesday, November 02, 2016
Book 1: ANNE FRANK: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife
Book: ANNE FRANK, The Book, The Life, The Afterlife by Francine Prose (2009) Format: E-book
Owned Since: March 2015
E-books are not my preferred reading format. Batteries die, which is incredibly frustrating, and I hate reading on my phone. But I get at least two daily emails notifying me of cheap e-books, and at least once a week I click the "Buy" button. The Kindle app and the iBooks app are both loaded to both my iPad and my iPhone, and I'm afraid to tally up the number of unread books in my virtual libraries. They're all books I want to read, and I tell myself I'll get to them eventually.
Francine Prose's ANNE FRANK was one of those books. I'm glad I finally got to it. It should go without saying that no one should read this book without reading some edition of Anne Frank's diary first, whether that's THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL, originally published in 1947 (but not in the US until 1952, for reasons Prose explains), or the revised/expanded DEFINITIVE EDITION published in 1995.
I first read the original diary when I was ten or eleven — that would have been fifth or seventh grade — and while it was on a couple of "suggested reading" lists for classes in high school and college, I never took a course that taught it. I've never seen the theatrical adaptation, by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett; and my own mother warned me off the 1959 film version, even though Shelley Winters won an Oscar for her portrayal of Mrs. Van Daan. I've reread THE DIARY several times over the years, and always felt a need to preserve that experience as mine, personally, without any outsiders telling me what to think of it or how to feel about it.
Francine Prose's book was an exception worth making. She gives us Anne Frank the teenager, Anne Frank the writer, Anne Frank the legend and ultimately Anne Frank the industry, walking us from Anne's own determination to be taken seriously as a writer through the wonderful and strange long-term effects her work has had around the world. Prose looks closely at the nature of memoir — as Anne's book ultimately was, since she rewrote the earlier entries herself over the last year of her life — and the difficulty of separating the writer from the work, even after the writer is gone.
Writing is a deeply personal act that creates something separate from the writer, something intended for strangers to read and react to. A writer can't always anticipate a reader's reaction, and certainly can't control it; and yet that writer-reader interaction is so intimate that the better the writer is, the more the reader feels he or she knows the author, and possibly someone the writer knows the reader as well. (See: Stephen King's MISERY.)
We can't know Anne Frank, but Prose shows us how the very action of writing her life down changed her. Measuring things, naming things, changes them; it's a fundamental law of the universe. Anne Frank would have changed more as she found new things to name and measure, and it's still a gaping wound in human history that she didn't get that opportunity.
One problem with reading is that it leads to more reading. A casual reference to Carson McCullers and her husband reminds me that I know almost nothing about Carson McCullers — I had not even known she was married — and makes me think I really ought to read something of hers beyond A Member of the Wedding, which I disliked when I had to read it in seventh grade. I also remember that Flannery O’Connor hated McCullers’ last book, which leads to the thought that I really need to reread The Habit of Being. If I read McCullers, which one should I read?
Tuesday, November 01, 2016
NaNoReadMo: 30 Books in 30 Days
At one point in my life, when I commuted by bus and Metro, I regularly read more than 200 books a year. Even after I started driving — and then even after I started working from home — I regularly read more than 150 books a year. Working at The (late, lamented) Mystery Bookstore boosted that number, but I've always been open-minded about where my books come from: bookstores, libraries, publishers, friends, Goodwill and yes, even Amazon.
Last year, for the first time in my adult life, my reading list didn't break 100 — and that was even after I let myself count everything I'd read for work, including galleys I proofread and manuscripts I edited. I topped out at 99, with an advance reading copy of the delightful BE FRANK WITH ME by Julia Claiborne Johnson. (Read it, it'll make you happy.)
This year my pace is even worse: I finished my 73rd book of the year, Thomas Mullen's DARKTOWN, yesterday, and again that list includes proofread galleys and edited manuscripts. If I keep reading at this rate, I won't even break 90 by the end of the year.
What happened to me? I got a smartphone. Apps now fill the waiting time I used to spend reading. Waiting for a bus? I'll check in with my virtual pals on Nats Twitter. Stuck on the Metro? Let's level up on Candy Crush. Train to New York? Somebody linked to a great article in The Atlantic . . . and am I caught up on the Wittertainment podcast?
I'm frittering my reading life away, and this year in particular the election news has become a malign drug. I know who I'm voting for. I know her adversary is a candidate of unprecedented venality and ignorance. I don't need to be any better informed about that person than I already am, and it's literally giving me nightmares.
So for the month of November, I'm changing course. I'm retreating into words on the page, and the goal is to read 30 books by the end of the month. That's a lot, but it's doable if I stay off social media and allow myself a few semi-cheats:
- Three of these books can be work-related (galleys I'm proofreading or manuscripts I'm editing)
- Three of these books can be re-reads
- A book longer than 500 pages counts as two books (I'm making this exception specifically for James Michener's TEXAS, which someone sent me as part of last month's book swap)
- Three of these books can be young-adult or children's books
Onward . . .
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