A Snippet on History

Sitting at the Author's Table at today's Literary and Prologue Society of the Southwest's luncheon, I found the answer to a question and some food for thought.

Over my strawberry shortcake dessert, I listened to Laila Lalami, author of The Moor's Account, tell us that we are all Moors.  I've always wondered if Othello was an Arab Negro, as is her main character, or if he was of a more Semitic cast.  If Ms Lalami is correct, he's both of them and all of them and each of them.

I'm comfortable with that conclusion.  It's nice that someone else is thinking about it, too.

Her historical novel tells the tale of the first non-European explorer/invader/conqueror of the New World. How is it that I am 63 years old and this is the first I am hearing about him?  His story, though short on details, certainly deserves mention.

I flashed to Big Cuter's 9th grade social studies text, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, and my son's antipathy toward the book.

"It's history written by the losers, Mom.  I'm more interested in the winners."

The unheard voices have lessons to teach us, too.  I've been thinking about it all afternoon.

 I love it when fiction takes me to deep thought.

Meg Wolitzer Says Hi

That was a very cool Subject in an email I sent to an old friend this morning.  Very cool, indeed.

It was true, as my email went on, that I was eating lunch with her. The Literary Society of the Southwest, my favorite organization with the most pretentious name, hosted The Interestings's author at our first luncheon of the year. Scarlet, newly arrived from New York City (Murray Hill, to be precise), and my guest for the afternoon, said that she was a front row kind of girl, and since I am, too, we took two seats at the author's table. 

The author walked in, alone, pinning her name tag to her outfit, saying "Hi, I'm Meg," as she distributed herself and her materials into and around her chair.  "Yes, you are," I replied, inanely, but she smiled and we all introduced ourselves and we chatted, just the way women all over America are chatting today. 

I wondered which town on Long Island she ascribed to Jules; it reminded me of mine, Oceanside, but not Syosset, Meg's hometown.  We settled on West Hempstead and then I asked her if she knew Maid Marian, my friend since 7th grade, whose books are on the shelves next to Tolstoy and Theroux and Thurber. 

Of course she did.  She smiled as I took out and turned on my phone; she knew I was sending a message.  It was so cool.

And that's why The Interestings didn't interest me when I picked it up last year.... being cool, fitting in, it was all there and it was too close to home. All those fears, all that angst, all that worry about being cool came back and held onto my heart and my soul and I had to put the book down before the first scenes ended.

Ugh.  Why would I want to go there again? Voluntarily subject myself to the reemergence of all of that crap?  Because, even forty some years later, I still carry the baggage of those years.  I know it's crap and it still hurts.  Not as reality, but as sorrow for the girl who was there at that time.  I was sad enough, right then; I didn't need to add anything else to the mix. 

I started it again because Scarlet and I were going to the luncheon.  With a chip on my shoulder I opened to page one, and by page five I was wondering why I'd ever put it down.  I was entranced.  I was in love with The Interestings just as much as Jules was in love with them in the book. 

They are the most clearly drawn characters I've encountered in a long time.  Though some in the room questioned the probability of the relationships, it all felt very real to me.  I went away for a transformative summer, too, where people who wouldn't have noticed me in high school sought me out at lunch time. 

That was cool, too.

Watching the characters grow over time, their story told in the convoluted, folding back on itself way that conversations among girlfriends have a tendency to do, I never felt a false note.  The characters surprised me and shocked me and worried me and appalled me, but they never felt untrue to the selves the delightful woman across the table had created for them.  The story moved along more quickly when children of their own arrived and they had less time for one another but, as that Facebook meme keeps reminding me, we all have friends with whom the passage of time is immaterial; two months or two years and you still pick right up where you left off.

Sitting with Meg Wolitzer was like that.  A gentleman at the back of the room told her that he didn't like the book, that he liked her mother's work better, and then he left..... and he was the first thing she talked about when she returned to us after her speech.  Not the laughter, not the compliments, but the one thing that had gone slightly awry occupied her attention ... along with the chocolate desert.

We reassured her, we dismissed him, we made excuses for bad behavior and turned the conversation toward how wonderful she had been, picking up on bits and pieces which had intrigued us, drawing her away from judging and into our circle ... of new friends .... who felt like old friends....... which is a good thing because Scarlet got Meg's personal email address.

We're having lunch next time she's in town.

And THAT is very cool.

Hobnobbing with My Favorite Living Novelist

To be in New York on a beautiful day is to feel razor-close to being in love.  Trees flower into brilliant clouds that drape across the parks, plumes of smoke and steam rise into the blue or curl away on the wind, and disparate actions each the object of intense concentration run together in a fume of color, motion and sound, with the charm of a first dance or a first kiss.  

Isn't that wonderful?  Don't you smell it and taste it feel it in your bones?  I do.

Mark Helprin paints pictures infused with love and an up;-close and personal attachment to the fiber of the city.  He's in love with Manhattan, from the Staten Island Ferry all the way to Central Park.  He knows what it looks like as you approach from Long Island,  driving past the

early commuter trains with sleeping passengers leaning against the windows rumbl(ing) west to a city sleeping in gray.

I've been that sleeping passenger, nestled next to my father. I'd felt the same frisson of energy and excitement  as the cliff tops of Manhattan came into view, and the absolute certainty that this was The City.  There were no others.

Mark Helprin spoke at the Literary Society of the Southwest's season-opening luncheon on Thursday.  The Tucson Country Club was open and airy and the windows showcased more greenery than I've seen in months.  I was one table over from the main attraction, talking about Christina-Taylor and fame and doing good and, of course, our children and where they are and what they're doing and how 20-somethings today don't see gender or color or race in the same way that we did .

The speakers are sometimes less than wonderful at these events; the conversation never disappoints.

As dessert was served, the author was introduced.  Harvard and Harvard and Princeton and Columbia and that's just where he received his education, not the places he's shared it.  His biography was as impressive as his full head of hair.  He described himself as short  but, to me, he was a giant.

Speechifying is not his long suit.  Neither is reading from his book.  I loved his explanation: he wanted me to have my own experience as I interacted with the printed page.  If he read it aloud, there was one  and only one interpretation - his.  I feel the same way about music videos; I like to make up my own stories to the songs.

I wasn't surprised that we agreed.  I told you, he's my favorite living novelist.

He told corny jokes, and I'm not sure why.  More interesting were his stories of run-ins with book reviewers ("MMM KKK hates me, always has, always will") and the stories about his parents.. His father's Mark Cross briefcase which was given to him as he set off for college, his grandparents gifting his mother to a theater troupe and a life of indentured servitude and abuse, these were told with an ease and comfort that revealed the human behind the seller-of-his-book.

The story of In Sunlight and In Shadow is one of love.... but that would be my answer.  When asked, I've told people that it's a love story set in and about New York City after WWII, and that's fine as far as it goes. When he was asked the same question this afternoon, Mr. Helprin gave a laundry list of topics which I began to jot down in my moleskine until I realized that I was listening to a modern day recounting of the ships on their way to Ilium, with Homer naming and explaining them, on and on and each one obvious and yet revelatory, and I was swept up in the cadence and the careful retelling of the story as he listed artistry and the Mafia and bankers and .....  I was having a moment, I must admit.

At the end of the question and answer session, I raced to his side.  Okay, I strode more quickly than I usually stride.... I'm still  far away from racing anywhere. I told him that he was "my favorite living novelist" and he neither blushed nor stammered.  He looked right back at me and said "Thank You."  I talked about the snow sled from Winter's Tale and Daddooooo being the same age and in basically the same business as Harry, the main character in Sunlight .  I told him how I'd taken that ride into Manhattan, and seen the sunrise, and known that I was in love.  I complimented him on taking me back to the rolling garment racks on 7th Avenue  and how I couldn't remember the last time I'd cried at the end of a novel.  He took my book and inscribed it with my name and his and I floated out to my car.

It was a very good day, and I was here to see it.