Providence Art Club is said to be the oldest art club in the nation after the Salmagundi Club in New York. It is a great honor to be asked to discuss the nexus of history and fiction in Every Soul Is Free. The novel is fiction but it is true in every detail, even when describing events that were created entirely for the purpose of telling a good story. Providence, R.I., Thursday, October 2, 2014.
At the League of Utah Writers awards dinner, Saturday, September 13, I had prepared myself for a shutout, when:
It is called the Gold Quill award. The League of Utah Writers gave me a gold quill pin and stickers for my books.
My “Posse” — to use the modern hip vernacular — tells me that a blog should be cutting edge and snarky. Well, this one is simply a warm record of a great evening, at “Read Between the Wines,” a book club, in Stamford, CT.
As I should have expected, the very first question was, “Have you done any book clubs before?” Isn’t it amazing how an honest answer breeds doubt. And the honest answer was, “No,” but then a hurried recitation of all the plans and events coming up. So, there had to be a first and what a wonderful first to face: seven professional women, all accomplished in their own right, and all participating in a book club where the ground rule is one had to read the book as the price of attendance.
I had a planned reading and discussion, along these guidelines:
We set right into the evening: discussion, questions, and the guidelines became an afterthought, spiced with a little reading here and there. Of all the questions, the one that was the most interesting to me, and unexpected, was “How did you get the language like that. Did you have to study it? Did you write the story and then go back and fix the dialogue?”
Two and a half hours later, after dessert, I thanked them all for a wonderful and probing discussion of Every Soul Is Free. And I thank those wonderful ladies, here. My “Posse” tells me blogs should have photos. Next time, I hope I’ll remember to take a shot of the blueberry pie!
I’m not sure that rants are a good way to sell novels, but I am sure that most political writers don’t come anywhere near as close to the truth as a good novelist. Why is that a surprise? Shouldn’t be. After all, every novelist I know pledges to himself to write the truth. Don’t personally know any political writers, but I wonder if that is their pledge. Based on what I read, I doubt it. Back to my original point. The new conservatism is an oxymoron. If it is respectful of conservative principles, it is not new. If it is new, it is not conservative. Yes, new 100 years ago may be conservative today, but that is just the point. A new conservative is just as phony as a new antique.
Over the weekend, 8/23-24/14, the WSJ published an article that tried to present a strategy for Grandparents providing 529 plans to their grandchildren and then hiding them from the colleges to which those children applied.
To take just two quotes: “Grandparents increasingly are opening such (529) accounts to help cover their grandchildren’s college costs. But their well-intentioned efforts could hurt students’ chances for getting financial aid…[and seven paragraphs later] The problem is most acute when students would otherwise qualify for financial aid based on their parents’ finances.”
Sheriff Simms is extremely concerned about how he passes on lessons to his grandson. I am extremely concerned about how we establish, support, and transmit solid values to our next generation. I am also a willing participant in supporting education costs for grandchildren.
Taken in total, the premise of the article offends me. In short, it is an article that encourages everybody to cheat. I know it’s tough and I know people scramble for every advantage they can cadge and I witness a daily assault on society’s belief in honest self-reliance, but sometimes I just cannot take it anymore. It is like recommending that I — of grandparent age — put all of my assets in a trust the beneficiary of which is my children so that I will qualify for Medicaid when they put me in the nursing home.
Parents often need help in financing the college education of their children (last I checked, the need amounted to 87% of all families). That they have received help is something to report honestly, not hide and obfuscate so that the money that is provided in help can be saved to spend on some purpose the WSJ writer did not explore.
Perhaps there is a more valuable place to spend your money than on helping your grandchildren get educated. Well, one such place is to provide for your old age. So, what you cannot give them, you cannot give them. But, let another few voices scream with me, what you can give them, do not lie about.
Amazon, self-serving though they may be, keeps track and attests to the power of the reviews posted there (and here.)
I invite you to look over my shoulder while I attempt to convince Western Fictioneers that Every Soul Is Free should be considered in their annual Peacemaker Awards for Best Western. The contest sets a cut-off date of 1920 and I have suggested this is not an appropriate way to view western stories and values. Courtney Joiner, the Chair of Judges, has asked in a very gentlemanly way “if you could tell me how much of the book takes place after 1920, which is our period cut-off date. This probably feels arbitrary, but I know the original rule was established to keep the focus of the Fictioneers on what’s considered ‘traditional westerns,’ it was felt that the work should fall into that time span.” Here is my response:
I believe one needs to review three arguments.
First, the specific question you asked: How much of the novel is pre-1920 v. how much is post-1920? You were kind enough to note that the idea of measuring it is quite arbitrary and, indeed, may be subject to some wide interpretation in how to measure the “how much.” Without submitting to you the entire outline of the novel under consideration for the Peacemaker Award competition, that outline would show 26% of the pages and 15% of the chapters. It would, however, show 100% of the tension because every bit of the dramatic question arises from events in 1869 and their subsequent evolution between two families.
Second, to the broader time question that you did not ask: As I mentioned, this is the third in the High Mountain Sheriffs series. That series starts in 1853 and includes two sheriffs, Luke Willford Simms and John Willford Simms, whose stories precede this one of Mark Willford Simms. I have started the second book, John Willford, and we expect Pen-L Publishing to publish it as soon as it is ready. These are of a piece and it makes the story 67% or 75% or 100% prior to 1920, depending on what point of view you take.
Third, the point of view you take is all important: The real argument is that the values of the West where I grew up are timeless. You used the phrase “what’s considered ‘traditional westerns.’ ” I will assert that every day of my life I was raised with traditional western values and putting a clock to them measures the wrong thing both about the traditional values and about the West. I acknowledge that a film noire type novel about a detective set in Wyoming in the 1950s is different from a Matt Dillon tale, but it is for your judges to determine whether it should win an award, not the rules. Further to my point, one of the reasons for this story and starting where I did is to show that the Old West lived way into the middle of the twentieth century, and nothing demonstrates that more than a posse, a horseback chase in the mountains, and a finale with gunfire.
Thank you very much for taking the time and effort to make this determination.
Stay tuned. I’ll let you know how it comes out. Of course, I hope to win, but first I hope to participate.
My July is spent in Maine, well, commuting to Maine, because Anne spends July at Drakes Island. After a few years, I started to look forward to July in Maine. Now I do. So, this year, truncated and chopped up, turned out to be a frustrating disappointment, ended already on Sunday the 20th, and without once going in the water. So, you can imagine how happy I was to see Anne in the waves on Tuesday and now I share her with you
I went with friends Wednesday night to the Bolshoi production of Swan Lake. I should have read more about the current state of the Bolshoi before I went or maybe just stayed home. The Playbill credits Yuri Grigorovich with Libretto and Choreographic version. Put bluntly he has re-written in drama and dance a classic.
I believe we need modern classics. I applaud John Adams in opera and I like the new choreographers. In fact, even Balanchine can be viewed as a new classic. But this Bolshoi production cannot honestly be labeled Swan Lake. Perhaps it could be called Grigorovich’s Swan Lake if plagiarism and theft are legitimate in ballet. More appropriately it should be titled Political Correctness and the Evil Genius.
Grigorovich has transformed a 19th Century classic into a politically correct, storyless, political statement, where females now dance male roles, and in the end — why didn’t I see it coming — evil triumphs over good.
Rothbart is no longer Rothbart, he is the evil genius. He no longer seduces and enslaves the women, he exercises evil mind control. Siegfriend is no longer given a crossbow for his birthday, but a tankard of (?funny juice?) and he falls asleep to gain his transport into the kingdom of the swans. No swan transforms into a woman to save lives and thus is destroyed one of the greatest balletic moments for all ballerinas — no transformation to create the breathtaking and awe inspiring ports de bras exit of the swan. In the second act, women dance male roles; fair maidens are so sexually neutral that you don’t notice Odile merely walks on the stage. No need for a dramatic entrance if you are the only act in town! And Siegfried fell for her, even though she fell out of her feuilletes. (In a production so disrespectful, maybe that, too, was deliberate.)
When I wrote all of my complaints to my good friend, John Tessitore, to save him from the temptation ever to waste $150 a ticket on today’s version of the Bolshoi, he wrote back: “It is of course a disappointment to hear that a production from the world’s once greatest ballet company could be anything less than spectacular. …it seems obvious to me that this Grigorovich production is the latest in what I find a silly trend to rewrite and in effect completely reverse the plots of fairy tales, which … most recently continued with the Disney film Maleficent. … I don’t find these re-workings to be particularly clever or interesting. …The good news is that all fads fade away.”
There actually was an author, Musäus, who wrote the fairy tale, ca. 1784. If someone changes the ending of Every Soul Is Free 230 years from now, I assure you I will come back, mount my own posse, and hunt him down.
Right now, I am in a major debate with myself about whether the time it takes to write on this blog and post on my facebook Author’s page is worth it compared to the amount of work I have to do to sell Every Soul Is Free and finish my third novel. (My third novel is far enough along I have sent it out to readers and editors and my editor wrote me yesterday,
“Where the hell did she come from?” about a character who placed a call in the eighteenth chapter. I had been living with her since the eleventh chapter, but apparently the reader hadn’t. Major work to solve.) Anyway, debate aside, rewriting aside, I have a wonderful family of children and step-children (whom I think of without the “step-“) and they went running today in Portland, a half-marathon for some, a 5k for others. Everyone finished, in great time, and they are all beautiful, see them here.