Interview: Author Robert Bausch

Q & A:  Author, Robert Bausch

1.       What inspired you to become a writer?

                Mostly reading. And storytelling. My family was big into storytelling. IN fact, all of my brothers and sisters are wonderful storytellers. Our gatherings are a blast because we sit around and tell and re-tell funny stories. My father was the best storyteller I ever saw. He acted out all the parts, remembered whole conversations and just kept everybody laughing.

                        I wrote my first novel--one I never published--when I was 14. I was in the eighth grade. It was a novel about the Civil War. That's all I read about. I read no fiction at all to speak of. I  remember the Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, The Bobbsie Twins. I loved a book called The Wahoo Bobcat, and one about a cougar called "Yellow Eyes." I read "The Call of the Wild," and "White Fang." But mostly I read nonfiction: Douglas Southall Freeman's four volume biography R. E. Lee, Henry Steele Commager's History of the Civil War, Shelby Foote's The Civil War: a Narrative. I read all of Bruce Caton's books: Glory Road, Mr. Lincoln's Army, A Stillness at Appomatox. The list is longer than I can include in this e-mail. If it was about the Civil War, and it was published between 1957 and 1963, I read it. My grades went deeper and deeper into the alphabet, but my parents didn't overreact to that--as long as I was passionate about something, and devoting my time to it, they let me fail in school. Not failure that made it so I'd have to repeat a year or anything, but they didn't make a big fuss when I brought home 'D's instead of 'A's. In the 9th grade, my English teachers convinced me pretty quickly that I had nothing of any value whatever to say, and I didn't start writing again (except for a few long letters to my mother) until I was 26 years old and just out of the military. My English teachers meant well, but they did not respond to anything I had to say. They simply corrected what I wrote, graded it and gave it back. I'd get a 'C' because I didn't use commas' correctly (I still don't) or because I had one sentence paragraphs.

                        Rubbish.

                        I thought that was tone of voice. I thought it was clever to say something that everybody believed, then have a one sentence paragraph that identified clearly how I felt about that idea, and then a new paragraph presenting an alternate idea. I remember my teacher telling me it was both a sentence fragment, and a one sentence paragraph and taking off twenty points. I   had read enough by then--remember I loved reading and I'd read lots of histories and such--that I KNEW she was wrong, but I didn't argue with her. I just stopped listening. My grades, all the way through school were bad. I barely made it. I like to tell my students that my report card read like a guy who stutters trying to say Dog. 

 

2.       What is your process for beginning a new novel?  Can you explain your writing habits?

                I write, or try to, every day. When I begin a novel, I start with a character—somebody I have a vague notion about, and I put her or him in a situation and see what happens. Sometimes it develops nicely and I keep at it. Other times I go back and change the situation. Or tweak the character. Whatever happens in the book I am writing should happen because of something in my character’s make up—in who she is, or who he is. What kind of person have I created? I don’t want anything happening in the plot to serve the story or my attitudes or my spleen or any of my appetites. I want what happens to happen because of the character. If the writing isn’t going well, and  I can’t think of the next thing I want to say, I’ll turn off the monitor and write blindly, looking at my reflection in the monitor. If I’m using a laptop, I’ll put a piece of cardboard between me and the screen. If I can’t SEE what I’m writing, I can’t judge it, or edit it, or in any way let the critical side of things interfere with creation. I have to let the creation take place first. I need that critical side though, because one of the worst things you can develop as a writer is allegiance to earlier drafts. You have to be willing to let go, to have the critic come back and with a savage pen, DO something with the dross produced in the creation. I believe ANY day I write, whether or not it goes well, is a GOOD day. And days when I DON’T write are anxious and frightful and not very much fun, unless I have planned and chosen a day off. I like those. I do not like any day I plan to write and don’t. It is always five o’clock on a damp November day in my soul when that happens.

 

3.       How do you balance being a full-time college English professor with your writing career?

                I don’t get a lot of sleep. I work on Saturdays, Sundays, Fridays—Monday afternoons, Wednesday mornings; almost never on Tuesday or Thursday because I teach all day, both days and Tuesday nights. I think I’m a better teacher of writing when I’m writing. I don’t often borrow from one to pay the other, but it has happened. I’ve had to stall things in a class because of where I am in a novel—near the end, comes to mind; or editing for publication. Those things can take away from the teaching, but I really do work hard not to let that happen. When I have grading to do, late in the semester, I almost never work on Wednesdays, Saturdays or Sundays. Those days are reserved for grading. Sometimes I’ll do both. I’m never, ever bored, or sitting around wondering what to do. I live every day as though sleep is the wrong thing to do; I never go to sleep until I can’t possibly stay awake any longer. I get up, usually, with the sun. I like mornings for the fresh coffee and the Washington Post. I am a champion napper. I can lay down on the couch, close my eyes and be sound asleep in seconds. Sleep for an hour or so and then I’m ready to go late into the night and early morning.

 

4.       Can you discuss a few projects that you are currently working on?

                I’m in the last stages of a novel called As Far as the Eye Can See. That is to say, I’m polishing the third draft and will read it one more time and tweak it one more time before I send it anywhere. Last summer I finished a novel called The Legend of Jesse Smoke. It is with my agent now, and he’s trying to place it with a publisher. I have another book I wrote two years ago called, The Strange Case of the Silent Girl. Or, In The Fall They Come Back. I haven’t made up my mind about its title. I have not been able to place it, so I’m waiting to sell one of the others so I can then perhaps get that book into print. Right now I’m in the worst place a writer can be: My last book, Out of Season, did not do well. In fact, it sold so poorly, they cancelled the paperback on it. Those numbers are what publishers look at. So, the reality is, I may have published my last novel while I’m alive. It is heartbreaking sometimes to think about it, but that’s where I am. The first thing a prospective publisher does these days is go on his computer banks and he can find out how many books I have sold; if they don’t like what they see, they don’t really care how good the book is. They won’t buy it. But I am going to keep writing them, by God. It’s who I am.

5.       What would you consider to be your best work and why?

                That’s really a hard question to answer. It’s like trying to decide who your favorite child is. I don’t really have a favorite child. I’m proud of all of them, and I guess I have to say I’m proud of all my books and stories. There’s not much I’d do differently, to tell the truth. What’s out there is out there, and has to stand on its own. I can tell you that A Hole in the Earth really surprised me for how well it did. And I think The Gypsy Man was perhaps the most intricately engineered work I’ve ever done. But as I said, I can’t pick a best work.

 

6.       Explain how you create your characters.  Are they mostly imagined or do they come from personal interactions?

                I am proud to imagine and create characters. Perhaps they are composites of folks I have known, I don’t know; I’ve been as keen an observer of people as my limited insight and intelligence will allow. But mostly I like to invent. Create people from images and dreams and just thinking when I first see them, or when they first come into a work. I’ll change sometimes later in the drafting, but usually the characters I create remain who they are all the way through the work.

 

7.       What is your most valuable piece of advice for someone about to embark on a writing career?

                Read. Read as much and as often as possible. Read poetry, lots of poetry—it helps with descriptive metaphor, figurative language, economy, precision. Read history, biography; read the history of ideas; philosophy. Read the great novels, short stories and plays of the Russians, the French, the English, the Americans, the Latin Americans, the Spanish. You have to know the world; the more you know, the more you will have at your disposal when you’re trying to write. Read more than one book at a time. I read six or seven. Sometimes even more. I read IN each book, each day. Reading all those different voices will keep you from sounding like other writers; you’ll sound like yourself and only yourself. And it’s not hard to do—after all, we know many different people and if we see them everyday, we don’t have to be reminded about what is going on in their lives. It’s the same thing with reading several different books at once. If you do it every day, you have no trouble keeping up with what’s going on in each of them. If you want to be a writer, you have to read more than you write, more than you watch TV, more than you do almost anything. The more you see the language in print, the more you can navigate its extraordinary mixture of sounds and the beauty of its ideas in your own writing.

 

8.       How do you get touch with your creative self?

                I lower my standards and just produce a text. That’s what happens when I turn off the monitor or cover the screen. Other times, when it’s going well, I don’t need to do anything but show up at the keyboard, with a hot cup of coffee.

 

9.       What was the inspiration behind a few of your novels?

                Almighty Me was inspired by a conversation with my brother in law. We used to go to a fishing camp in Canada every year, and one night, sitting by the fire, smoking my pipe and drinking whiskey, I wondered out loud if Christ trimmed his beard. In all the likenesses of him his beard is perfectly quaffed. He was GOD. Certainly he knew about air conditioning, and plaque, and how to avoid ever having a tooth ache. In fact, couldn’t he insure that he would suffer none of the horrific inconveniences of the Middle East in 30 A. D.? My brother in law wrote a poem called “Christ Trims his Beard,” and I went home and started thinking about what would happen if a man got God’s power now—if we had another go at a Christ. Would HE trim his beard? I had a ball writing that book. It was originally titled Spanking the World. At first I had Christ himself coming back. He was terrified when he saw all the folks wearing crucifixes, the churches with crosses. He thought he’d come to a place that hated him completely—sort of like what it would do to Abraham Lincoln if he came back and everybody was wearing a small derringer around their necks, and churches had big pistols on top of them; or if John Kennedy came back and all the churches had high powered rifles on their roofs and folks wore little symbols of that around their necks. But eventually it worked out that it was a man, and automobile salesman no less, who is GIVEN god’s power.

                My first novel, On the Way Home was inspired by a student of mine who had been captured by the Viet Cong during the Viet Nam War. They kept him underground and tortured him mercilessly. He asked me what he could possibly do with his hate. I wrote a short story about his experiences and when Harpers magazine rejected it, the editor there told me that I had not dealt with my “veteran’s pain” in the story. So I used that story as chapter one, put a piece of paper in the typewriter and began chapter two. That became my first novel and what it developed into was the problems my character has adjusting to new life with his mother and father in Florida. It becomes about love and not hate at all. It’s also about fear.

                Most of my novels, though, have been inspired by, merely, the desire to produce another one. It’s like a new car. You like it for a while, but then, after some time, your admiration wanes. It doesn’t smell new anymore. The thrill of driving it is gone. It’s just your car. It may stay that way for years, but you always look forward to buying another new one. It’s the same with a novel. Eventually, you gotta have a new one.

 

10.   Who are some of your favorite authors and why?

                My brother Richard Bausch, George Garrett, Alan Wier, James Dickey, William Faulkner, Herman Melville, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Penn Warren, Anne Beattie, Howard Norman, Ernest Hemingway, Joyce Maynard, Elinor Lippmann, Jane Hamilton, James Jones, William Maxwell, Ron Rash, Joyce Carol Oates, Harper Lee, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov, Tom McGuane, Kaye Gibbon, Alan Gurganis, Flannery O’connor, Richard Dillard, --oh, the list is endless. I love the work of all of these writers. I have left off as many as are on this list. I could write a brief essay about each one and why I love his or her work. And this is only the fiction list. I loved Shelby Foote, Henry Steele Commager, Bruce Catton, David Halberstam, Walter Isaacson, Nathaniel Philbrick.. it’s a long list. I love the philosophy of David Hume, and Voltaire; the work of John Paul Sartre.

                I know this list is long, but truly, if I had to go to a desert island, I could not take any less than these guys and their books with me.

 

I hope all this hasn’t bored you too awful much.

My eighth novel, In The Fall They Come Back has been available since early in the year. It has done well among reviewers and I’ve heard good things from readers. The book was the hardest novel I’ve ever written because much of it is based in fact. The characters are based on people I knew and worked with in my first two years of teaching. I’ve never written a book like this before—I’ve always been proud to make up all the stories I write. But this one wanted to be told, and hounded me until I decided to write it. I hope it has some influence among readers, especially those who are students or teachers. It is available online at Amazon.com, in both Kindle and book format. It can also be purchased on line at Barnes & Noble (Bn.com) in both paperback and Nook format. The best review of it follows:

In the Fall They Come Back

            By Robert Bausch

            Reviewed by Joseph Peschel

Robert Bausch is an award-winning writer who has written and traditionally published seven books. His newest novel, In the Fall They Come Back, is as good as the best novels I’ve reviewed or just read in quite a while, and that includes a couple of major prize winners.

Based on a true story, In the Fall They Come Back is Ben Jameson’s narrative, a sort of fictive memoir, of his time teaching at Glenn Acres, a small private prep school in Virginia. It’s a quiet story about a teacher’s relationship with his students. There’s Leslie, beautiful and dangerous, a femme fatale everyone warns Ben about; Suzanne, who is mysteriously damaged and mute; and George, who’s physically beaten at home and bullied by the kids at school. Ben fights with and placates abusive parents, bucks the school system, and soon faces sexual misconduct charges.

Ben tells his story with the benefit that a few years of contemplation and wisdom provide. He’s in law school as he recounts those two years of not just teaching, but “about caring a little too much; or maybe about not caring enough” about his disparate and desperate teenage students. It’s his benevolence for his students that undoes Ben and ultimately destroys one of the three students he attempts to save. Bausch does a masterful job as storyteller seamlessly moving from the mid- to late-1980s, in this wise and profoundly heartrending novel.

It’s 1985 when Ben, who’s recently finished graduate school, takes a job teaching English at Glenn Acres. He has no intention of being a professional teacher; instead he’s taken the job with the idea of eventually going to law school, but he’s happy to get the job. Ben has his 120-130 students write business letters, book reports, and personal narratives. Mrs. Creighton, the head mistress, also requires that Ben’s students keep daily journals and fold over the pages that no one will read. The catch: Ben must read everything on the folded pages. To satisfy Mrs. Creighton, Ben agrees to tell the white lie to his students. For a while, he goes through the motions of being a decent teacher. But soon, he aspires to be better than the sort of mediocre teacher he encountered when he was in school and considers making teaching his life-long work. He adopts a mentor, Professor Bible, but eventually, Ben goes far outside the bounds of Bible’s advice. He finds himself becoming more involved in the lives of his students and near assaulted by an angry parent. His girlfriend Annie says he has a “Christ Complex”: trying to fix everything and solve the problems of his students.

Bausch depicts Ben not only as wonderful but flawed teacher, but as an amazing human being. Bausch’s novel is steeped in realism—you won’t find any post-modernist techniques here, only subtle artistry from a brilliant writer who so cares about his characters that he depicts them, especially the students, succinctly, vividly and often poetically. Leslie is not just beautiful: Bausch writes about “her fine hair almost the color of a daisy’s eye, swaying in the fall breezes.” Suzanne is not just plain-looking and shy, but has “stringy hair that hung in front of her like a bright red waterfall, and she never took her eyes off the floor in front of her.” Bausch is a marvelous artist and storyteller as proven in his first novel On the Way Home (1982), and again in A Hole in the Earth (2000) and Out of Season (2005). In the Fall They Come Back, an indie-published book, is destined to be considered among his best work.

The Kids are All Right: Liz and Diana Welch

The Kids Are All Right

I knew ever since I was 21 years old that I was going to write my life story.

I know that sounds pretentious—whenever I would tell people I was working on a memoir, they’d say, ‘how is that possible? You are too young!’

And then I tell them my story, which started out like a fairy tale:

My father was an investment banker, my mother a well known soap opera actress. They got married in New York City, and then moved to a suburb an hour north, to a preppy town called Bedford, New York.

At the time, my mother had quite a following:  she was the original Maggie on the Doctors, a well know soap opera in the sixties.  She left the show to give birth to my big sister Amanda, and then was hired to play Eunice on Search for Tomorrow.   She got pregnant with me, and the writers wrote her pregnancy into the show. 

Dan was born next. And our life seemed perfect.  We had pets, and a pool, and went on vacations to Disney Land. I never once recall my parents even fighting. I really had the happiest childhood.  Then Diana was born.  We called her the “love child” as she was not planned. Mom was 42.  She called Diana a “happy accident.”

Happy really is the best word to describe our family. 

And then, in 1982, our father died in a car accident.

I was 13 at the time. I was in 8^th grade.  Diana was only 4.  Amanda, my big sister, was 16.  And Dan was 11.

We only have a few photos of the four of us together during that sad time—sad not only because our father had died, but because one month after his death, our mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

To be honest, none of us believe she was going to die—that meant we’d be orphans.  That was an impossible notion!  Oliver Twist and Annie were the only orphans I knew.   We were privileged kids with ponies, and a country club membership too! 

But those perks disappeared after our father died.  He left our mother in terrible debt—1.2 million dollars to be exact.   Mom sold our house and 7 acres of the estate we grew up on, and the five of us squeezed into the three-room caretakers cottage on the remaining seven acres.   Dan slept in a walk in closet.

Our mother was told she had six months to live after our father died but she was strong—she lived for 3 ½ years before finally succumbing to the disease on December 13, 1985.  Diana was 8 years old, Dan was 14, I was 16 and a senior in high school and Amanda was 19 and a junior at New York University.

Here’s the hard thing:  none of us really believed she was going to die.  We kept thinking she’d beat the cancer.  She did too. That is why she did not make adequate arrangements for us, her kids, after she passed away. As a result, the four of us were split up and we learned, by writing this book together, that losing our parents was not the most painful thing that ever happened to us:  being split up as a result of that loss was.

It took five years before the five of us found one another again—I moved in with a local family for six months before graduating from high school and taking off—first to Europe for a year, then to Georgetown University where hardly anyone knew I had lost my parents.   I kept it a secret.  Diana stayed with another local family who felt it was in her best interest to not see her siblings.  The family was preppy and proper—they thought we were wild, and drug addicts.  They were not entirely wrong.

Dan was bounced around from one family to another before he landed in an apartment in NYC with our mother’s dear friend, a single career woman who had never had or wanted kids.  And Amanda left New York city for Charlottesville Virginia after being held up at gun point.  She was sick of the city.

That is where our story ends—Amanda bought an old farmhouse and for the first time in five years, the Welch kids had a place to go and be together. Diana’s family decided, for reasons we are still fuzzy on, that it was time for Diana to move back with her big sister. 

The book begins with me as a 13 year old losing her dad, and ends with Diana as a 13 year old finding her family.

And it is told from all four perspectives. In fact, I tried to write this story for 15 years by myself. I wrote three drafts and none of them worked.  So one day, I wrote a scene about my father’s funeral and sent it to Diana who by then was living in Austin Texas and, like me, making her living as a journalist.

I asked Diana to line edit my work. She called me the same day she received the story and said, I don’t remember any of this!  Instead of editing my memories, she wrote her own, and sent them to me.

I remembered the outfit I wore and the fight I was in with my best friend.  I was 13.  Diana remembered how dad smelled, the feel of his scratchy beard on her soft cheek. She was 4.

We asked Amanda what she remembered. As a 16 year old, she remembered our mother falling apart.  That made her angry.

We asked Dan, and he remembered Dad telling him that “men don’t cry” and struggling with his own sadness about our dad’s death, now that he was the “man of the family.”

Losing your parents is every kids worst nightmare.  And it happened to us.  And we not only survived, we thrived.  This story is about that loss, but it is also about sibling love.  And being teenagers—yes, there are sad scenes of our mother coming back from chemo, or from the hospital with a bag instead of a bladder. But there are also hilarious scenes of keg parties gone awry and my brother getting busted for turning science beakers into a bong in boarding school.

I have visited several high schools to talk about this book and am constantly amazed at how students respond.   Because this story is told in four perspectives, everyone picks a favorite character—the person the most relate with, or feel for.  Most people love Amanda—she is the tough one. She swears in every chapter. And the first line of the book, she tells the reader that she hates her family.  By the end of the book, she is the one who brings us back together.

Dan is the only boy—which means he has to go through puberty in a house full of women. 

And Diana is the baby. She sees the world through childlike eyes.

What we learned from writing our book this way—together—is that everyone has the right to their own version of the same story. 

In the book we openly disagree with one another about very serious things:  like my mother’s cancer diagnosis.    I remember the tumor being the size of a grapefruit and in her uterus.  Amanda corrects me on the very next page:  Actually, she says, it was cervical cancer and the size of an almond.

In my 13-year-old mind, it got bigger.

This book was inspired by William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, which tells the death of Addie Bundren from several different points of view—from Addie’s husband, to her young son Vardamon to the vultures that are trailing the horse drawn wagon that is carrying Addie’s coffin to the family burial ground.

I am in no way comparing myself to Faulkner!  But I will say this:  his book inspired me to write mine. And I think our story will inspire your students to write their own family stories, from different points of view.

It certainly lends itself to that.  I have lead workshops at different high schools that focus on point of view—pick an important milestone in your life.  Who was there?  Write about that moment from your own point of view.  Now pick another person at the scene—how might that person experience it differently?  Now write about the same scene from his or her point of view.  One student wrote about the day her parents told her they were getting divorced.  After class, she came up to me to say, “I never thought about it from my father’s point of view before.  I see it in a new way.”

That is in the end all we can hope for—to make people see things from different angles, to broaden their world view. 

My brother and sisters are my best friends still to this day. And we could not be any more different.  We respect one another’s memories and stories and experiences.  That helped us recover from a most painful loss.  And we hope will lead others to heal too.

Liz Welch is the co-author of The Kids Are All Right with her sister, Diana.  Her siblings Dan and Amanda also contributed. Find out more at www.thekidsareallrightbook.com.

Originally posted at the Atlantic Wire and has been republished with the consent of the author,
Alex Leo.

Nora Ephron: The Funniest Feminist

Lucas Jackson / Reuters

Alex Leo 8,680 ViewsJun 26, 2012

Nora Ephron passed away today. Not only did we lose an amazing writer, thinker, journalist, storyteller, and director; we lost the world’s funniest feminist.
I was lucky enough to know Nora for my entire life. Whenever I gave her something of mine to read, her first note was inevitably “make it funnier” no matter if it was supposed to be funny or not. The second note was usually “more honesty”—instructing me to reveal the parts of myself I find deeply embarrassing or shameful or scary because that’s what this is all about, right? It’s very hard to challenge a woman who wrote about everything from her parents to her divorce to her neck, and there would have been no point in arguing because she was right…always.
Ephron came up in the 1960s, working first as an intern in John F. Kennedy's White House (“…it has become horribly clear to me that I am probably the only young woman who ever worked in the Kennedy White House whom the president did not make a pass at,” she wrote in The New York Times), and then the New York Post (she got that job by satirizing Post columnists and being a little too good at it). From there she started writing essays for Esquire like “A Few Words About Breasts,” which combined her penchant for personal history mixed with incredible humor.
Ephron graduated from Wellesley at a time when six girls in her class were expelled for lesbianism. “We weren't meant to have futures, we were meant to marry them,” she told the college's class of 1996. “We weren't' meant to have politics, or careers that mattered, or opinions, or lives; we were meant to marry them. If you wanted to be an architect, you married an architect.”
Naturally she had something to say about that. Her work in the late 1960s and 1970s focused on women, sex and the feminist movement, which was eventually compiled into the books Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women and Scribble Scribble. She used her greatest gift to cut to the core of inequality and misogyny so prevalent at the time:

• “Men dominate the conversations in Washington and therefore, as far as I am concerned, the conversations are far less interesting than those in New York.”
• “I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.”
• “I am still amazed at the amount of Christian charity [Wellesley] stuck us all with, a kind of glazed politeness in the face of boredom and stupidity. Tolerance, in the worst sense of the word.… How marvelous it would have been to go to a women's college that encouraged impoliteness, that rewarded aggression, that encouraged argument.”

Forget the never-ending “women aren’t funny” line that spews from every male comedian who has been or will be on the Celebrity Apprentice. The debate Ephron tackled was sexual politics itself and she did it with humor, with words both powerful and resonant. She understood that aphorisms aren’t just throw-aways that cheapen over time but can be piercing retorts in the right woman’s mouth. As Entertainment Weekly wrote about Crazy Salad, “Gloria Steinem was never this much fun,” which is both a little catty and deeply true — Steinem’s weapon of choice was never humor.
Of course, Ephron also made fun of the women’s movement when she found things frustrating or ridiculous. You are more likely to be heard if you’re a member of a choir you’re preaching to after all. When Crazy Salad was published, the AP wrote, “A dedicated feminist, Miss Ephron nevertheless pokes affectionate fun at her consciousness-raising group and sexual politics (‘We have lived through the era when happiness was a warm puppy…and a dry martini and now we have come to the era when happiness is ‘knowing what your uterus looks like.’)” (Notice that the AP called her “Miss” and not “Ms.”)
Ephron took on Betty Friedan, Phyllis Chesler and Jan Morris in her essays, always poking holes where she saw hypocrisy, cliché or narcissism, and at the same time outwardly struggling with how to be a good reporter and a good feminist. I would (with admitted bias) argue that even if you don’t agree with what she wrote the courage and talent behind it was great for women.
As her career grew, she extended her voice from journalism to film, writing Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and directing Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail and many more. She said she “[tried] to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.” Considering the number of Oscar nominations and the number of roles Meryl Streep took in her films, I think she exceeded expectations.
In 1996, two years before You’ve Got Mail would premiere, she gave the commencement address at her alma mater. After some warm-up jokes about dated hairstyles and tuition prices, Ephron, in no uncertain terms, challenged the graduating class to bring it or go home:

What I'm saying is, don't delude yourself that the powerful cultural values that wrecked the lives of so many of my classmates have vanished from the earth. Don't let The New York Times article about the brilliant success of Wellesley graduates in the business world fool you — there's still a glass ceiling. … Don't underestimate how much antagonism there is toward women and how many people wish we could turn the clock back. One of the things people always say to you if you get upset is, don't take it personally, but listen hard to what's going on and, please, I beg you, take it personally. Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim. Because you don’t have the alibi my class had.

Reading that as a woman in my late twenties makes me think two things: “God she’s right” and “wow the 90s were terrible.”
When her book I Feel Bad About My Neck came out, she again found herself at odds with some women of her generation who saw it as demeaning to negatively portray the process of aging. If that were what the book was about, I’d agree with them, but it was so much more than that. It was about family and politics, food and parenting, and yes, a look at those little embarrassing moments that come with time and all the little injustices your body inflicts without your consent. As she’s said in many ways over the years, “When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh.” I dare you to argue that’s not empowerment.
Nora Ephron will be remembered for many things — that she loved her family, that she helped change the voice of journalism, that she was one of the first great female directors — but I will always remember her for what she did for women be they her friends, women she mentored, women she advised, women she employed or women who read/heard/saw her work. Thanks, Nora, from all of us.
Alex Leo is the director of web product for Thomson Reuters Digital. Previously she was a senior editor at The Huffington Post and an associate producer at ABC News. Her work has appeared on The Daily Beast, Jezebel, The Hairpin, as well as in Nora and Delia Ephron's play, Love, Loss and What I Wore.

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Topics: Obituary, Nora Ephron

Q & A: Frances Mayes (Author - Under the Tuscan Sun)

Q & A: Frances Mayes

As a girl growing up in Georgia, what were some catalysts to your love of literature and travel?

In a small town, I gravitated to the local library. Something to do! I read my way around the shelves. By high school, I was determined to read every single book there. Along the way, I decided that the most exciting thing to do in life was write, that is, once I figured out that not all writers were dead.  I kept notebooks on books I read and little red leather diaries with keys.

Why did you decide to pursue a career in writing and education?

Once in college, I fell hard for the romantic poets, then the modernist poets. I always loved the entire range of southern literature. I imagined myself in black, in Paris. In actual fact, I married after college and only became a writer very slowly. What spurred me was deciding to go to grad school. When I finished, I was invited to stay and teach. To my surprise, it suited me perfectly—the gift of good work with very motivated students, and the creativity of devising classes that taught the craft and vision of poetry. I later became department chair and stayed at the university for 23 years.  I loved building the department and teaching. There I wrote The Discovery of Poetry, a loving guide for readers and writers, and six books of poetry. My whole writing career before Under the Tuscan Sun was passionately focused on poetry.

Your memoir, Under the Tuscan Sun, chronicles your move to Italy.  What propelled you to make this transition?

Initially, I went for a month in the country. This was after divorce. I’d met Ed and was quite enchanted. As soon as we got there, I developed a grand scheme of spending more time in that blessed place. After thee summers of renting in various locations in Tuscany, I bought Bramasole. I kept my job in San Francisco—Ed and I only lived in Italy in the summers and vacations until about ten years ago. Now we spend more time there but we always live more or less half the year in the USA, too.

This move abroad was brave and unusual. How did you think outside of the box?

This was 1990. Believe me, it was outside the box! No one I knew ever had done that kind of crazy thing. Of course, now it is more usual, but then—mamma mia! That month in the country house just warmed my being in such a way that I knew it was a good idea to put myself there as much as possible.

How involved were you in the making of the film version of your book?

I met with the director over a period of a week, talking and scheming about what would work. We became good friends. The screenplay was essentially hers. I had nothing to do with casting, although I’m honored to have been played by the darling Diane Lane. The only thing I really didn’t like about the movie was her wardrobe. I would never dress as frumpily as she had to in most of the movie. I think she only had two pretty outfits in the whole film!

What are some of the similarities and differences in the places where you have lived (Georgia, Virginia, California, Italy)?

Mio dio! That’s a book. Let me just sound off a bit with a partial answer. California is like nowhere else on earth. It’s a country in itself and the way of the future. It is so far ahead in so many ways. Italy thousands of years deep and you’d need five lifetimes to be able to say, I know Italy. You cannot in one lifetime.  Georgia, Virginia, the two poles of the South. Gentry South, hardscrabble South. I love them both. Right now, it’s spring in North Carolina, where I live, and the sweetness of this season is unbearable. The land smells good, and all the houses are riding on rafts of pink and white azaleas. Everyone’s hanging out big ferns on the porches. The air is balm. Lucky to live in such diverse places.

Do you have advice for Americans who wish to live abroad?

No. You’re on your own!

Who are some artists and authors who inspire you?

My husband, Ed Mayes, poet. Friends:  Alberto Alfonso, architect and painter, Rena Williams, painter, John Beerman, painter, novelists Lee Smith, Michael Malone, Allen Gurganus. And old friends: Keats, Yeats, Colette, oh, so many.

     You’ve just returned from a book tour.

     Yes, 32 events in 23 cities. A fabulous experience!

    Can you share some details about your new book?

   The Tuscan Sun Cookbook is a gathering of the feasts we’ve prepared        while living there for two decades. It’s dedicated to the friends whose tables welcome us over and over. From these friends, we discovered the traditional recipes of their ancestors. But, more than that, we learned about how amazingly improvisational Tuscan cooks are around their ingredients. We looked into their pantries, made grappa with them, put up hundreds of jars of tomatoes, scrapped the dishes, fired up the bread oven, pulled up the onions, rolled out the pasta, pickled the eggplant, ironed the tablecloth, picked the wildflowers—tutto! It has been a grand adventure to find out how the Tuscans know how to live like the gods.

What is your opinion of social media and do you think it has made an impact on the genre of writing?

I’m fairly new to it. I love my blog and the interactions on it. www.fancesmayesbooks.com  Twitter is fun and very direct. On my book tour I met lots of Twitter pen pals and it was as if we did know each other. I think Twitter could get to be overwhelming by sheer volume. And I hate all the “inspiring” quotes—I scroll right past those. Facebook seems useful to keep in touch with people you know. I don’t like seeing so many pet pictures. If social media has any impact on the genre of writing, I would be surprised if it isn’t a negative one. I’m waiting for the dreary novel based on Twitter. But wait, I can see 140 character poems, little expanded haikus. Everything has an influence, right?

In your youth, what was the root of your love of literature and writing?

Undoubtedly that of most writers: reading, something that seemed so magical and was so earnestly desired when I was a very young child, that my mother, besides reading to me all the time, taught me to read when I was three. It’s a very short step from being an early and prolific reader to being a writer, at least the kind of writer I am. This is not to say that being a writer was my aim, when young. It was not. But the seeds of writerliness were sown from those books in those days, whether I knew it then or not. I do think there is something else at play here, because a great many people read prolifically and/or learn to read at a young age and do not become writers. I don’t know what that is, other than an inborn propensity to communicate. When this manifested in my school work, I was urged to consider writing and teaching (clearly there was a pedagogical bent to the work!) by my teachers.

In a former life, you were a Franciscan nun.  Can you please describe the circumstances behind pursuing this vocation and why did you depart?

No, I really can’t. There are many reasons and circumstances, spiritual and secular (mostly the latter) for both acts and most of them are personal and even those that aren’t are indescribable, at least in an interview of this length. I can tell you that part of the impetus was the pursuit of the Unknown,  another was to live a dedicated life in the service of good (whatever “good” means). It turned out that I had a different definition of “good” than was compatible with the convent in which I lived and worked, but it was a place and a time of great joy, great silence, and great learning. In one sense, my departure, though voluntary and a sad necessity, was not a departure at all, since the knowledge gained as well as so many of the skills, propensities and values inculcated during that time have remained with me.

You are a huge enthusiast of Welsh culture.  What attracts you to this part of the world?

Its invisibility. This is explained best in my Pushcart essay, Bendithion, which can be found here: http://www.bu.edu/agni/essays/print/2007/66-solow.html

Bendithion means “blessings” in Welsh.  What was the reasoning for choosing this title your essay?

Well I had other titles in mind (containing words like trothwyol and anweladwy) but honestly, I thought that this one was the easiest for Americans to pronounce. The idea was to convey that Wales and my liminal experience in it, was a gift, a benison - for which I was grateful.

What was the inspiration for your novel, Felicity and Barbara Pym?

Not long ago, I was asked the same question by the Barbara Pym Society and invited to write a short article for their newsletter. The text of that article, which answers your question, can be found on my Felicity & Barbara Pym Blog at http://felicityandbarbarapym.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/291/

In the aforementioned novel, how autobiographical is the character, Professor Mallory Cooper?

I will have to refer readers to my interview by New York Times contributing writer -  in which this question is asked and answered, as I cannot better that answer here. http://bit.ly/vMRYzb 

In the past, how did you balance your thriving academic career, motherhood, and your affiliations with the entertainment  industry?

There wasn’t much need for balance, actually, because these vocations/occupations were consecutive, not concurrent. There was a little overlap when I was doing my Master’s degree and teaching and later when I was working in Hollywood and also teaching, but basically, when my children were young, they were my vocation. Period. When they got a little older, I began to do free-lance writing. I then created a consultancy and worked mostly at home. It was only when they were in high school that I began to teach/work/study full time and my hours were compatible with their schedules. They were a priority, no matter how busy any of us were, and we ate dinner together almost every night throughout even their high school years. When they went to university and left home, my writing career took precedence (in time).

What is your writing process and schedule?

What engages me in the art and the act of writing is the companionship of the words themselves. The process depends on the nature and depth of that companionship. In the beginning of any work, when the project and the words are new (and they are new every time) the process seems more like a self-taught class and requires more structure – a time, a place, a set number of words. Little word-dates. Later, when the relationship between the words/material and me deepens and becomes more intimate, the process takes care of itself – I can’t wait to get up in the morning to inhabit the world I am creating. By the time that happens, I am in limerence (in the most positive definition of that word) with that world and no imposition of artificial structure is necessary. It is all self-propelling – the desire to be with the words. 

Who are some authors who inspire you?

I have addressed the authors I admire elsewhere at length – on my blog and in other interviews and guest blogs, so I’ll just mention a few authors whose work I admire and concentrate on the word, “inspire”.

First of all, almost everything I have read in my life has contributed in some way to my own work – including children’s books, which I still read, English Literature from Beowulf onward, some American literature, and not insignificantly Greek, Latin and Hebrew texts of philosophy and theology in the Catholicism and Jewish traditions that I have studied over the years. Having said that, the authors whose writing has recently influenced mine include Antonia White, AS Byatt and Anita Brookner. These are three writers who have near perfect command of a language that describes interior landscape. Beautifully lucent.

With regard to inspiration, that powerful but delicate symbiosis between two minds, and in some cases, two hearts, there is no doubt that my colleague and friend, Dorian Llywelyn, scholar, professor, theologian, Welsh-American Jesuit, bard, musician, and writer of staggering depth, is a singular inspiration to me.

This is a different thing from influence, which is a more static, dissipated, and distant thing. This kind of inspiration takes the form of its origin, in which there is the dynamic of breathing in(to) and breathing out, generating, sustaining life. Inspiro, expiro. It extends beyond the writerly influence – it  breathes new life into the soul. It makes one hungry, restless and resistant – sighted with extra perception and blinded to all but the force of creation - a force of such magic, such seminal power, that it confers a certain obligation on anyone who employs it to do so with reverence.

Father Llywelyn adds a significant intellectual, creative and spiritual dimension to my life and all I write is transformed by that significance. Put simply, I don’t write the same without him as I do with, or rather because of, him. It’s not that I can’t or don’t write (or haven’t written) a good many things without the benefit of this profound connection but I prefer, vastly, the writing that arises from our confluence. I also come away from each encounter with more to write about.

In another interview, I remarked that what initiated my writing was “arrested experience” – that millisecond when suddenly, something just stops you in your tracks and you forget to breathe for a moment. That’s when I write. I write about that something. This is precisely what happens in an encounter with Father Llywelyn and with his writing – arrested experience. I mean, anyone who has a chapter in his book (Toward A Catholic Theology of Nationality) called “The Value of Thisness” that lucidly, elegantly explores “the heart of each person’s existence” is himself a formidable standard of excellence. I like formidable standards.

Do you have advice for novice writers attempting to sell books?

I do: Read everything industry leader Jane Friedman writes on this topic (and others): www.janefriedman.com Also keep book marketing experts Porter Anderson http://porteranderson.com and Kathy Meis www.bublish.com close to hand as primary resources in this field.

What is your opinion regarding blogs, social media, and the future of the publishing world?

I honestly don’t know enough about the first two to make any useful comment, or at least none that has not been made before. Regarding the third, the sooner that (some) agents and (most) publishers get over the their clubby, twee, 19^th century perception that this is an elite, leisurely gentleman’s profession and realize that they have become a great, creaking, really annoying dinosaur, the better traditional publishing will become. I think that survival for these publishers means a drastic programme of streamlining and creating niches – resulting in fewer companies, smaller lists, better books and faster turnarounds. I’ve been lucky with my publishers and agents, but I know that was a fluke. Too many writers’ experiences, particularly in the last few years, have been the opposite.

Finally, can you share some details about your current projects and plans for the future?

Currently, I have a children’s book with an editor at a large publishing house and another with an agent. I am writing a new one that I can’t talk about right now, which is non-fiction. Then, I am turning the creative part of my PhD dissertation, The Bendithion Chronicles, into a book and the critical part into a couple (or more) scholarly essays.

My husband and I are going to Europe in the fall to lecture at different universities. There is one other book on the horizon, which I am meant to be writing with someone else based on the letters we exchanged. My agent had a look at some of these last year and thinks it should be the priority.

Harrison Solow Bio:

American writer Harrison Solow has been honoured with multiple awards for her literary fiction, nonfiction, cross-genre writing, poetry and professional writing, most notably winning the prestigious Pushcart Prize for Literature in 2008.  A writer and strategic consultant of rare experience, her work spans Hollywood, Academia, Business, Law and Literature. Dr. Solow is one of the two best-selling University of California Press authors of all time (at time of publication), a Notable Alumna of Mills College where she earned an MFA, and holds the rare distinction of a British PhD in English (Letters) with a critical and creative dissertation “Accepted as Submitted: No Changes” from Trinity Saint David in 2011.

She lectures in English and American Literature, Creative, Nonfiction and Cross Genre Writing, Specific Authors, Science Fiction and American Culture, Professional Writing, Philosophy and Theology at a number of universities, colleges, arts and cultural institutions in the United States, Canada and Great Britain.

A former faculty member at UC Berkeley, she accepted a lectureship in the English Department of the University of Wales in 2004 and was appointed Writer in Residence in 2008. She returned to America in 2009.

Dr. Solow is a strong proponent of the traditional Liberal Arts, the Fine Arts and the Utilitarian Arts as separate and equally respectable entities, an advocate for Wales and a patron of literary endeavours.

She is married to Herbert F. Solow, a director & producer and the former Head of MGM, Paramount and Desilu Studios in Hollywood. She has two sons.

Her latest book is Felicity & Barbara Pym: http://amzn.to/Jcnpc9 and http://felicityandbarbarapym.wordpress.com/

Harrison Solow is available for interviews, lectures and workshops. She can be reached through her manager, Simon Rivkin simonrivkin@solowtwo.com

Web pages:

http://redroom.com/author/harrison-solow

and

http://lamp.academia.edu/HarrisonSolow 

Follow Harrison on Twitter: @HarrisonSolow and on Facebook

The Art of Graham Nash

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