Flutterings

Just started reading this. It's a trilogy, each part corresponding to a mother-daughter relationship: Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane, Madam C. J. Walker and A'Lelia Walker, and Marie Curie and Irène Joliot-Curie.

Wasn't sure what to expect, but I am enjoying it so far, having read the Wilder/Lane part over dinner. It's from Rose's point of view, and deals with (non)motherhood, (un)reliability of memories, and choosing what to include in a story (which carries a layer of self-reference here, natch, since Atkins is herself picking and choosing what to tell about Wilder and Lane).

Recommended by Brain Pickings, where the many reasons to enjoy it are already described at length.

I spent part of my Friday evening with two books by Laurel Snyder, Good night, laila tov and Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher.

"Laila tov" ("good night" in Hebrew) is a phrase that instantly takes me back to Tel Aviv. There are also a pet cat and a pet dog, which those of you who have read my other reports may remember tends to mean automatic points with me. [/unapologetic sap] In Baxter, a woman rabbi saves the day. (I am also inordinately amused that the book carries a blurb by Lemony Snicket.)

Also, at Snyder's blog: her unpublishable tribute to Maurice Sendak

It's over a year old, but I only now just read Arthur A. Levine's post on what makes a good book good:

...isn’t this the exact question a writer asks himself when sitting down to write? What do I have to say that is original, that contributes, that hasn’t already been done, said, written a thousand times before.

Of course when I’m in the editor’s chair I have an answer for this. I tell the concerned author that it isn’t what you say, it’s how you say it that makes an important, a worthwhile story. After all, books are like people—there are only so many positive qualities going around: intelligence, sensitivity, humor, physical attractiveness. As a person you can’t realistically think you can reinvent these categories in order to make an impact—to get people to like and notice you. It’s the particular combination of those qualities that makes you an individual, that draws people to you or repels them.

(I can already hear some of you sputtering, "But what about...?" FWIW, I was too (I share mrissa's "can't say never 'cause..." problem. Though it's not really a problem, just a nuisance when one's itching to indulge in a Categorical Declaration instead of a Long-Ass Parenthetical Tangent. That, and the phrase "only so many" is automatically a red flag, even though he means well).

Still, I like what he said anyway. Mainly because he goes on...

....people often ask me how I stay responsive to wonderful new manuscripts when I read so many every week, every day. The good news and the bad news is that the really special ones stand out as distinctly as real flowers in a shop full of plastic imitations. And it’s just like that really. The actual, living flower, has a smell. It isn’t perfect, it’s colors can be off a bit. But it’s REAL and you know it.

And, he really does use the phrase "channeled kosher raisins" later in the speech.)

On the personal level, I'm at the dining room table with a plate of chicken livers and my second can of cherry Coke and a whole heap of whaling-through to whale through:

Currently frustrated with a story because I've identified at least six places (in addition to the editors' concerns) that don't seem real enough to me now that I've had a month away from it. (But I did fix one problem tonight. 500 words up; I'm guessing there'll be another 1,000-2,000 net once I excise the glib bits and come up with whatever should be said.

Currently inching along on the essay I'd intended to wrap up last weekend, but I'm going to have to tear myself away from it in a few minutes because I still need to (1) finish reading the playscript a student loaned to me on Dorothy L. Sayers, and (2) pull together my outline for today's lecture.

Other stuff due this month: The sermon, three courseware scripts, two other essays, an HP illustration, and a poem on Francis Cabrel's eyeglasses are all simmering on my mental back burners, but I can't do anything about them right now.

Anyway, I was looking up a detail for El Essay when I came across Levine's blog, which is what prompted this post. So, back to it I go.


ETA: ....And, this from the Spring 2007 Signals catalog: "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called Research." - Einstein

(Inspired by schemingreader's query in yesterday's comments.)

You Can't Take a Balloon Into the Museum of Fine Arts by Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman and Robin Preiss Glasser (Dial 2002). I could look at this book for hours -- partly because I love Boston, but also because the artist's selective use of color as a storytelling tool within her hilariously detailed line drawings is really cool, as are the parallels between the MFA paintings and street-scenes depicted. (The cat cameo is on page 16, which also includes a glimpse of the Make Way for Ducklings duckies.)

The Three Pigs by David Wiesner (Clarion 2001). This earned the Caldecott Medal (which Wiesner won again this year for Flotsam). Again, terrific use of art as a storytelling tool -- here, the pigs "escape" from the traditional story into several others (and collect a fiddlin' cat and a dragon along the way), and Wiesner's command of different illustration styles (photo-realistic, storybook, pablum) is wicked.