Fifteen Cool Authors

I don't know how I missed this game on Facebook, but thanks to a Jaunty Quills post from my dear friend Nancy Robards Thompson, I'm stealing it. The Rules: list fifteen authors (poets included) who have influenced you and made an impression. Don't take too long to think about it. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.

1. Dr. Seuss - This man taught me to love reading, as he did for most American children. Irresistible wordplay, humor, and wisdom, packaged with loopy, over-the-top illustrations. I hit the sweet spot with Dr. Seuss. I was exactly the right age to absorb the messages of The Sneetches and The Lorax and make them part of my life. My father read me to sleep each night with Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book, a tradition I continued with my own children. I'll also expand Dr. Seuss to include his colleague P.D. Eastman, the author of my personal favorite of the Beginner Books, Go, Dog. Go! These books will be read forever.
2. Laura Ingalls Wilder - History told in Half-Pint's voice. I adored these books and wished, oh, wished I could be as adventurous as Laura. And bad. She seemed to get away with so much more than I ever could! Wilder taught me that history was interesting and fun.
3. Norton Juster - The Phantom Tollbooth is perhaps my favorite children's book ever. Ms. Hoogeveen, my sixth-grade teacher for the short portion I spent in Ohio, read it to our class, and I fell slap in love. It has everything: adventure, mystery, impossibility, wit, puns, and minimalist illustrations by the equally wonderful Jules Feiffer. Juster is, by profession, an architect (a career I considered pursuing once), also responsible for the masterpiece The Dot and the Line. The fact that American treasure Chuck Jones chose to animate both of these says a lot about the material and its endless appeal. I read The Phantom Tollbooth to my AP students every year as a post-exam treat for them. Okay, for me.
4. Carolyn Keene - God bless the anonymous women writing under this pseudonym, who provided me with puzzles to solve and a heroine with curiosity and a brain.
5. Mark Helprin - I first picked up a copy of Winter's Tale because I liked the cover. (What can I say? I fed my horse obsession for years with Walter Farley.) Between the covers is perhaps one of the most interesting, unclassifiable, poetic books I have ever read. Helprin's sprawling cast of characters and audacious plot make for a reading treat. This book made me laugh out loud (Woola-Woola boys), smirk ("Claret, like fillet and wallet. You don't say 'wal-lay,' do you?" is one classic bit), fall in love (anyone who doesn't gasp when Peter sees Beverly playing the piano just doesn't get it), and weep. I treat myself to this book over and over.
6. Barbara Kingsolver - I'm amazed by her. The fact that she's a biologist kinda gobsmacks me. Talk about someone who understands voice! Every character in The Poisonwood Bible is so distinct, you can practically hear them in your head. Same for the women in Prodigal Summer. She even makes nonfiction great--if you haven't read her memoir Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, go pick up a copy. It will make even the most devout city-dweller wish for an ancestral plot of land and the will and ability to farm it. Amazing.
7. Ray Bradbury - This man loves language and is willing to fight for it. Fahrenheit 451 is on my all-time Top Ten Books list, but it's the way he builds a world that really makes me love him. His works are classics for good reason. There's no way you can come away from reading Bradbury without carrying the imagery of Montag's smoke-blackened face, the lion-scented playroom of "The Veldt," the twisted evil of Mr. Dark's carnival, the burning breakfasts disgorged by the frenzied stove of "There Will Come Soft Rains," or "The Sound of Thunder" in your imagination forever. As a writer, I'll always be partial to his advice, which is why Zen in the Art of Writing has a permanent place on my inspiration shelf.
8. Margaret Mitchell - My grandfather the doctor, who read constantly, once told me that I should write a book like Gone With the Wind because Mitchell was an amazing storyteller. He was right. Rose-colored history aside, that book is indelible because of the characters Mitchell created. I've yet to meet a reader who doesn't have strong opinions about Scarlett, Rhett, Melanie, and Ashley. I got sucked into this book in junior high and have reread it many times since because it's a cracking good story and because deep down, every girl has a little Scarlett in there somewhere. If she's really lucky, she's got some Melanie in there, too.
9. William Faulkner - Just like I think people can be divided into groups like cat/dog, blue ink/black ink, and peppermint/cinnamon, I think writers can be divided into Hemingways and Faulkners. Hemingways like conciseness of phrase, visceral prose, bold action, and absolutes. Faulkners, on the other hand, revel in mystery, nuance, and words. Faulkner makes the grand attempt and stuns and amazes in the process. I'll take "Memory believes before knowing remembers" as a first line a million times over "Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton." A million times. Faulknerian excess, I know, but there you have it.
10. Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird is a deceptive work. It's so simple on the surface that any decent reader can zip through it untroubled, but there is so much going on throughout that if you reach the end and you're not crying, you haven't been paying attention. Jean Louise "Scout" Finch is the unwitting prybar that broke open the white South to show it its flaws and taught us all something about dignity, respect, family, and truth. Harper Lee may be the most-celebrated one-hit wonder in the history of publishing. But if we only get one shot, please let it be as wonderful as this one.
11. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - Jody, Fodder-wing, and a yearling deer named Flag lured me into the mysterious underbrush of the Florida hammock when I was a child. This was one of the first works I'd read that I could truly see in my mind's eye, since Rawlings' Cross Creek is only a few miles up the road from our farm. Rawlings' memoir Cross Creek is a poem of a book, a celebration of a land that few people understand even exists in my beautiful Sunshine State. Shell Pond (our farm) and Cross Creek were far more real to me than any of Florida's famous beaches. Miami might as well be on the moon. Rawlings and her contemporary Zora Neale Hurston (another writer I could choose for this fifteen) told the truth of my home in voices I have heard my whole life.
12. Jane Austen - My college advisor adored Austen. He encouraged me to become a "Janeite" and read all of her works, but since I was basically avoiding anything that looked like a British novel at the time, I missed out. Until later. Reread after reread since, I marvel at the complexity of Austen's work, the sharpness of her wit, and the joie de vivre in her style. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer in possession of some talent must be in want of a muse. In Jane, many of us have found her.
13. Anne Lamott - Wise and hilarous, Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird belongs on every writer's shelf. Her books on faith, Traveling Mercies, Plan B, and Grace (Eventually) are warm and welcoming and reveal an openness that many people of faith seem to lack these days. She's laugh-out-loud funny and sting-your-eyes truthful, someone who's been through the wars and wants to help guide you through, too.
14. Stephen King - I spent a long vacation week in the ninth grade listening to a tape of The Alan Parson's Project's I, Robot my best friend Kathryn made for me and reading The Shining. King's ability to peel back normal to show its rotting bones has always been fantastic. Plus, he gets pop culture like no one else. I loved his essays in Entertainment Weekly and pouted when he finally stopped writing them. His response to the literary establishment who were collectively horrified at his National Book Award medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters is the best defense of popular fiction ever. And then there's On Writing. Most of my writer friends own it and adore it. Part memoir, part craft manual, and all engrossing. Plus, he is the man responsible for the amazing films The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption. For those ideas alone, he has my thanks, but he's given us all so much more.
15. Dick Francis - I picked up the first one because it had a horse on the cover (see Winter's Tale above). Francis started in a stableyard and a racetrack because he know that world better than anything--he was a champion jump jockey in England before injuries forced him off the track and into racing journalism--but what's amazing about his books is how neatly he incorporates research into every book. Although the racing world features prominently in every work, it never gets dull because his everyman heroes know about other things, too. How cool is it to pick up a mystery with horses and also learn about wine, survival techniques, living with a prosthesis, running a restaurant, and glassblowing? And yet, the pacing never flags. A gallop through a Dick Francis is a pleasure every single time.

I'm cheating a bit by not including a close group of writer friends who are fun and encouraging and wise and every one the kind of woman you're glad you invited into your life. I owe more than I can say to Kathy, Nancy, Caroline, and Melynda, plus many more I don't spend enough time with but admire the heck out of all the same. Here's to friends who get it, and the writers who inspired us all.

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Odd Couplings, Book Version

This post at Bookriot is one of the best things I've read in a while. It's a listing of the Top Ten Made-Up Literary Couples, with explanations of why the two belong together. With pairings like Jane Eyre/Rhett Butler, Katniss Everdeen/Aragorn, and Bella Swan/Lestat, how can you miss?

Reading a post like this makes you think of the possibilities. How about these?

Guy Montag and Belle (Beauty and the Beast) - Okay, cheating a little since she's a movie character, but she's drawn to tortured, guilty souls and could totally feed his awakened hunger for books!

Laura Ingalls and Hawkeye (Last of the Mohicans) - These two share a "westering" spirit of travel and a love of adventure.

Other ideas?

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You Ain't No 'Lectric Elephant

I grew up in awe of my maternal grandmother. A farmer’s daughter, she rarely had idle time. Nearly every hour of the day, she was busy—cooking, managing the books for the farm, making phone calls, volunteering at the church—and that was when she was retired! This is a woman who woke every morning at the ungodly hour of 5:30 am (so I thought then; I’ve since discovered I share her love of early mornings) and often had a pound cake cooling on the counter by the time the rest of us stumbled groggily into the kitchen.

I can’t imagine how her workload looked when she had my mother and aunt at home and helped my grandfather, the traveling salesman, keep track of his travel and orders and expenses. They lived in Atlanta then, and to help manage all that work and the obligatory social engagements she had to maintain as a good corporate wife, she had a housekeeper named Alice.

I don’t remember Alice well, but I do remember her ability for succinct and accurate interpretation. Alice gifted the family with one of our favorite phrases. My grandmother was busier than usual and worried about it (a family trait), when Alice finally pinned her with a look and said, “Now slow down, Mrs. Bero—you know you ain’t no ’lectric elephant.”

None of us has ever understood why she picked that particular phrase, but it fit so well we now use it all the time. A case in point: this past week. Despite a very relaxing break, I managed to contract acute bronchitis again, and so I spent the first three days of the new school year at home in the bed. I dragged myself to school Friday out of an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, but I’m paying for it this morning with a headache and a relapse. That’ll teach me.

Alice was right. Nobody is this family’s “a 'lectric elephant,” and I’d do well to remember it.

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First Footings

New Year’s Day is a big deal in the Scottish culture. Trust me, you haven’t partied until you’ve done it with people in kilts and bagpipes. “Auld Lang Syne” was written by Robert Burns, remember? Hogmanay, as the celebration is called, has a number of traditions, but one of the most fun is the First Footing. According to Scottish tradition, the first person to cross the threshold of your home in the new year will determine the kind of year you’ll have.

Well, I'm not combing my friends list to find a tall, dark-headed male in the superstitious hope that this year will somehow be better than last. What I am going to do, however, is be sure that my steps are aimed toward making this year a successful one. That means steps toward fitness, steps away from mindless eating, steps back into creativity, and steps leaving overwhelming stress and worry behind. Sounds easy when you put it that way, right?

May 2012 be a happy, healthy, and prosperous year!

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Merry Christmas!

One of my favorite moments of Christmas is proceeding into a candlelit sanctuary on Christmas Eve, singing "Of the Father's Love Begotten" accompanied only by handbells. That moment encompasses the mystery and hopefulness of Christmas. May you all have a day filled with many blessings!

Of the Father's love begotten,

Ere the worlds began to be,

He is Alpha and Omega,

He the source, the ending He,

Of the things that are, that have been,

And that future years shall see,

Evermore and evermore!

O ye heights of heaven adore Him;

Angel hosts, His praises sing;

Powers, dominions, bow before Him,

And extol our God and King;

Let no tongue on earth be silent,

Every voice in concert ring,

Evermore and evermore!

Christ, to Thee with God the Father,

And, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,

Hymn and chant and high thanksgiving

And unwearied praises be:

Honor, glory, and dominion,

And eternal victory,

Evermore and evermore! Amen.

Words from “Corde natus” by the Roman poet Aurelius Prudentius, translated by John Francis Neale in 1851, sung to the medieval plainchant melody “Divinum mysterium.” Nativity of Christ window from the Chartres Cathedral.

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Writers Behaving Badly

Years ago, when I first started writing, I bought a copy of Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women, a collection of scholarly essays about the appeal of the romance novel edited by bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz. You see, reading romances was bad enough. Wanting to write them was tantamount to spitting in the Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey and betraying all my hard work as an English major. Reading dreck like romances required that I turn over my Mensa card immediately and scurry back to the respectable fiction aisle.

But what exactly does “respectable” fiction look like? Having read my share of literary fiction--prizewinning literary fiction, at that—I can’t say that I’m consistently impressed. Considering how snide serious writers are about genre writers (read about the kerfuffle when the National Book Foundation folks decided to award its annual medal for distinguished contribution to American letters to Stephen King here), I find it vastly amusing when a genre writer gets a good jab in at the literati. Like King’s acceptance speech. Or even better, this excerpt from British romantic novelist Mary Wibberley’s book To Writers with Love. Not long after being asked by a woman at a literary society when she was planning to write a “real” book, Wibberley attended an Arts Council presentation in which several women novelists read excerpts of their work. During the presentation, she writes,

A fleeting—but scathing—reference to Mills & Boon and romance in general was made by one of them during the question session. I kept silent, oh foolish me, but afterwards went and read the blurbs on the covers of the books these authors had brought for sale. One was about an eighty-seven-year-old woman who decides to commit suicide and locks herself in a cupboard to do so. I wasn't sure why. Another concerned a gorilla that is bred from a human ovum and goes to public school. So that's literature. I had so often wondered. One day (when I have time) I am going to write a book about a one-legged Armenian transvestite who is forced to flee (well, hop, I suppose) to a Tibetan monastery after being seduced by his lesbian dentist. I'm quite confident I'll get an Arts Council grant to write it. So, yes, lady from the literary society at which I spoke, I would like to write a real book. And that will be it. Or I might just build a pile of bricks.

*snort*

But one doesn't have to get snippy to get a point across. Bless author Maya Rodale for this gem of a response!

Check out more here.

Image from http://casserbs.tumblr.com/

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Thanks and Giving

I’m sitting at my kitchen table, the smells of fresh bread permeating the air. Nearby are sleeping dogs and a happy family. In a bit, we’ll drive over the river and through the woods to one of the grandmother’s houses (my sister’s MIL). We will have plenty to eat today, plenty to laugh about, plenty to share. This weekend will bring the Florida-Florida State game, Wicked’s Chex Mix, my Daddy, dinner with my sisters, and a meal with the men at the Fresh Start ministry downtown. If we’re lucky, we’ll also have some quiet time and even a nap.

Back in the 1950s, my aunt brought a special Thanksgiving blessing home from school. My grandfather liked it so much, he adapted it for everyday use. Here’s to blessings, both spoken and experienced.

For all thy gifts so good and fair,

Bestowed so freely everywhere,

Give us grateful hearts, we pray,

To thank thee this Thanksgiving Day.

Amen!

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