Reading Other People’s Mail: Sylvia Townsend-Warner and William Maxwell

So there are two stories in today’s post. Here’s the first:

Ten years ago you did not have to have an account with Amazon to review books on the website. I reviewed 5 books in 2003 and then didn’t go to the site again until 2006 when I became a customer. So I have reviews under Stephanie Patterson from Lindenwold, NJ, and Stephanie Patterson of Collingswood, NJ. One of the books I reviewed when I lived in Lindenwold 10 years ago was The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell. (Michael Steinman is the editor). My review remains the only one on the site. In preparing to write this week’s blog I revisited that review (which I cannibalized shamelessly) and discovered that it was now credited to ‘annbender.” Who or what annbender is I know not but I’ve let Amazon know I’m displeased and they are looking into it. Though we’re talking about a handful of reviews I wrote 10 years ago and read by a handful of people, I am outraged to see my work credited to someone else.

Outrage aside, I want talk about these fabulous letters. Maxwell’s account of a New York City blackout (dated November 17th, 1965) may be the best piece of prose I’ve ever read. I’d quote from it but it is so seamless, it’s hard to cite one exquisite bit of description without wanting to just quote the whole letter. Cliched as it sounds, that letter is worth the price of the book.

Maxwell was Townsend-Warner’s editor at The New Yorker and many of the letters are about writing. When Maxwell has to reject one of her stories, he is very kind, telling her the stories are wonderful, “but not for The New Yorker.”

Maxwell is very good on domestic moments, saying to his daughter who laments that he is bald: “‘Would you trade me in for a daddy with more hair?’ ‘Yes’ she says, teaching me a lesson.”

And on his resuming piano lessons in middle age: "…And Mozart is sustaining though I cannot do it. I would rather not be able to do Mozart than any composer I can think of."

Townsend-Warner, who lived in England with her companion, Valentine Ackland, offers a number of home remedies for illness, my favorite being champagne for any ailment above the waist, brandy for anything below. And she writes with droll humor of her life in an English village: "Poor Niou (a Siamese cat) has just had his first affair of the heart, and of course it was a tragedy. As a rule he flies from strange men, cursing under his breath, and keeping very low to the ground. Yesterday an electrician came; a grave mackintoshed man, but to Niou all that was romantic and lovely. He gazed at him, he rubbed against him, he lay in an ecstasy on the tool-bag. The electrician felt much the same, and gave him little washers to play with. He said he would come again today to finish off properly. Niou understands everything awaited him in dreamy transports and practising his best and most amorous squint. The electrician came, Niou was waiting forhim on the windowsill. A paroxysm of stage-fright came over him, and he rushed into the garden and disappeared.

“He'll get over it in time; but just now he's terribly downcast."

In recent weeks, I’ve bought The Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and I’ve discovered that Maxwell was a letter writing fool and I’ve purchased What There is to Say We’ve Said which contains Maxwell’s correspondence with Eudora Welty and Getting It Down Right, his correspondence with Frank O’ Connor, a writer I think is underrated these days.

So you’ll excuse me while I put my nose in other people’s business.

Stephanie Patterson

Insults

I flatter myself that I have a brilliant gift for invective. I come by it honestly. My father's family were very good at cutting people up. It was my Aunt Mildred who said, "So-and-so is the lowest worm that crawls," and though I didn't know the gentleman I admired the expression. Those of you who knew my father will remember that he could deliver terrible insults without ever actually cursing.

When I turned thirteen I came into my inheritance, as young girls do. Nowadays the thirteen-year-old girls simply drop the F-bomb when they feel annoyed. We didn't do that when I was thirteen. Still I found that I had this wonderful skill with words. I forget who I offended, but I didn't have an awful lot of friends.

Time goes on, and we mellow. It's been years since I called someone a jibbering ape to his face. Except for the breakfast table, where I sit commenting to Harold on the latest antics of the politicians, I generally keep the knife in its sheath. I'm trying to be a Christian, you see. It's hard, but we're supposed to love our neighbors.

But, writing fiction! There, you can let 'er rip. If it's an offensive remark, put it in the mouth of one of your characters.

I love a good insult. Any kind. Oscar Wilde said, "A gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude." Great one. Insulted a whole class. Dorothy Parker used to cultivate her sharp tongue, sharpened it every morning, she said. Someone at the Algonquin Round Table remarked that so-and-so was always kind to his inferiors. "Indeed?" she said. "Where does he find them?" I used to know a guy like that.

You can deliver insults with finesse and subtlety, like Dorothy Parker and Oscar Wilde, or you can deliver them with passion. Here's a classic from our friend Marlon Brando.

© 2014 Kate Gallison

The Rate of Change: a Historical Novelist’s Perspective

It’s all over the airwaves and tossed about at dinner tables all over the globe.  We are living in an era of enormous change.  EVERTHING has changed a LOT in the past say fifteen years.  The Internet has fundamentally transformed the way we live.  And, presumably, we are all either suffering from or benefiting from a tsunami of the NEW!!   Nothing like this has ever happened before.

You might be on the verge of believing all this hype.  Let’s talk.

We’ll start here.  My cousin sent me the following list in an email, which began with a picture of the 1910, Model T Ford:

At the time this car was made:

“The average life expectance for a man was 47 years.

Fuel for this car was sold in drug stores only.

Only 14 percent of homes had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of homes had a telephone.

There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!

The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour.

The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,

A dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year,

And a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME.

Ninety percent of all Doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!

Instead, they attended so-called medical schools,

Many of which were condemned in the press AND the government as 'substandard.'

Sugar cost four cents a pound.

Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

There was no such thing as under arm deodorant or tooth paste.

Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.

The five leading causes of death were:

1. Pneumonia and influenza

2. Tuberculosis

3. Diarrhea

4. Heart disease

5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars.

The population of Las Vegas Nevada was only 30!

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented yet

There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.

Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write and only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.

Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.

There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U.S.A!”

This list is pretty impressive.  But what strikes me about it is that pretty much all the radical departures from these hundred-year-old facts took place well before the arrival of the Internet and mobile phones, not to say the personal computer. 

Research during the writing of my historical mysteries brought home to me exactly when the biggest flood of change happened.  City of Silver takes place in what is now Bolivia 1650 and Invisible Country is set across in the border in Paraguay in 1868.  In the intervening two centuries, not much changed in the way people handled their daily lives.  In both stories, if you wanted to get from one place to another over land, you walked, rode a horse, or rode in a coach.  By 1868, there were railroads, but by their very nature, the places one could travel on them were very limited—and not many train lines yet existed.  If you wanted to get a message to someone who was not in the room with you, you had either to go to see the person or to write your message on a piece of paper and give it to someone to carry to its destination.  If you wanted to stay up past sundown, you lit candles or burned oil in a lamp.  If wanted to travel at night, you went when the moon was full, or you carried a burning torch.  If you wanted to cross the ocean, you went by boat.  Boats got a bit swifter between those two stories and somewhat more comfortable, but that was about it in terms of convenience.  If you got a wound that became infected, you were in danger of losing a limb or your life.

But then, consider what happened between how people lived in my first and second novels and how they lived in the third—Blood Tango.  The change was enormous.   In 1945, people in Buenos Aires had cars, telephones, electric lights, and the possibility of flying.  I could go on, but you get the picture.

The changes between 1868 and 1945 were much more transformative than the ones that have taken place since 1945.  The last fifteen years have brought us the Internet and smart phones.  Here is photo that gives you an idea of the progress:

Yes, what’s happening now is a big deal, but the difference between “no telephone” and “telephone” is much greater than the difference between “land-line telephone” and “mobile telephone.”

If you are looking for the era of biggest change, it’s the end of the Nineteenth and the beginning of the Twentieth centuries, which saw, as the prime example, the building of the electrical grid.  Also, of course, the invention of the airplane, the telephone, recorded sound, the radio, etc. etc. That was the era that revolutionized life on this planet.  The building of the Internet, you should pardon my expression, can’t hold a candle to the impact electrification.

Annamaria Alfieri

A Police Story: Policing The Hasidim

I was sworn in as a Probationary Patrolman in the New York City Police Department on May 15, 1967, one of 600 men—no women—starting six months of vigorous legal and physical training at the Police Academy, located on East 20th Street in Manhattan. Alas, training lasted but three weeks. In the first week of June, we were hastily packed off to Police Precincts all over the City in anticipation of a “hot summer” (meaning ghetto riots). A false alarm, as it turned out.

They gave us a .38-cal., 6-shot Smith & Wesson Police Special revolver, showed us how it worked, then put us out in the street. Over two days and nights, they bussed us up to the NYPD’s Outdoor Shooting Range at Rodman’s Neck in Orchard Beach, the Bronx. At night—the range illuminated by powerful giant searchlights and the headlights of Emergency Service trucks—we unhurriedly fired off 150 rounds at paper bulls-eye targets at increasing distances. The High Command hoped fervently we’d be able to hit what we aimed at in the street rather than innocent civilians, while praying we’d never have occasion to draw the weapon from its holster.

Twelve of us reported for out first day at the 90th Precinct on Clymer Street and Division Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We wore our regulation Academy “greys”—gray workman’s trousers with matching shirt, our shields attached through three holes at the left breast—clip-on tie, highly-polished black shoes, socks, and regulation blue police cap with shield headpiece minus shield number (we weren’t the Real McCoy yet). At our first roll call in the Muster Room of the stationhouse, the Patrol Sergeant, appalled, ordered us to ditch the “greys”, and get into regulation police blues before we became “marks” in the eyes of the criminal element. By next roll call, we were all in blue.

The 90th Precinct was two square miles in North Brooklyn bounded by the East River—a hop, skip and a jump across to the Manhattan piers. The residents were equally divided between Puerto Ricans and the Hassidim of the Satmar sect of Judaism. Rumor had it that the Hassids were the reason for our presence in the Nine-O. We worked steady tours, 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., on one-man foot posts, in a straight line for twenty blocks along Bedford and Lee Avenues—from the Grand Rebbe’s Victorian residence to the Marcy Avenue Projects, whence The Problem originated. Puerto Rican youths on bicycles, each Sabbath at sundown, would swoop down these Avenues—wide as the Champs-Elysees—to snatch the hats off the heads of the men on their way to Synagogue. The men dressed in their Saturday best, sporting Spodiks—long fur hats of mink and fox tail that retailed on Lee Avenue, the business hub, for $1,000 and up. No Spodiks went astray, however, during our occupation, that June through December of 1967.

One memory from my time among the Hasidim will not fade. One Friday afternoon around sundown, I was standing on post at the corner of Rodney Street and Bedford Avenue when a bent old woman, approaching from behind, grabbed my arm, startling me so that I dropped the nightstick I’d been practicing twirling on its lanyard. As she tugged me back up Rodney Street in the direction she’d come, I followed, feeling like a knight rescuing a damsel in distress (ancient as this particular damsel might be). She wore a black shawl on her head that hid her face, and I couldn’t make out her mutterings. But I anticipated doing police work, at least something more exciting than walking up and down my two-blocks-long, one-block-wide foot post, hour after hour. I followed her into the lobby of a dirty yellow brick multiple dwelling. She bypassed the elevator, instead entering the stairwell, and we climbed two flights, her in the lead, me in tow. She opened the unlocked door to a darkened apartment. From the light in the hallway I spied a light switch on the wall and flipped it on as I entered. The lights came on, revealing a neat kitchen, the parlor beyond filled with heavy Old World furniture, and the smiling face of my guide. She pointed by waiving the fingers of both hands at the kitchen stove and finally I understood. When I lighted the pilot on the ancient gas range, the smile on her wrinkled face was beatific. Then she shooed me out the door, back the way I had come. Every Friday night thereafter wherever I was working, I made it my business to be at Rodney and Bedford for our rendezvous. She spoke little, but no matter since it sounded like Yiddish. Besides, I already knew what was expected of me as the Shabbos Goy. The Hasidim are forbidden by their religion to engage machinery—lights, stoves, elevators—on Shabbos. So she went in search of a nonbeliever.

At the remove of nearly a half-century, still nothing in my experience as a New York City Patrolman is fresher, more pleasurable to me, than the memory of my encounter with the old Hassidic woman.

© 2014 Robert Knightly

The Cocoon

Matt Coyle presents Yesterday's Echo

A board member of MWA-Southern California, Matt Coyle reminds us he owes part of his writing career to Raymond Chandler. But insiders know it is the inner starch and talent that makes a good writer.

In his debut novel, Matt pulls us right in with his first sentence: "The first time I saw her, she made me remember and she made me forget."

How could we not read on?

Then he gives us a picture of his future writing with his last sentence: "Now strangers come to me with their problems and I try to solve them. I do it for money, not for love. it's easier that way. Fewer people get hurt."

This writer will want you to do what I'm going to do when I finish this intro… run out and buy his next book!

Thelma Jacqueline Straw

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Last May marked the long awaited (by me) launch of my debut crime novel, Yesterday’s Echo. It was a lifetime goal achieved and never would have happened without the help of many people, most of whom I mentioned in the book’s acknowledgments. But I never would have had the chance to thank anyone if I hadn’t been willing to break out of the comfy confines of the Cocoon.

I knew I wanted to be a writer ever since I was fourteen when my dad gave me The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler. The hard part was actually doing the writing and that didn’t really start in earnest for about thirty years. I’m a slow starter. However, even when I buckled down and consistently put my butt in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard, I still had a lot to learn.

Being a fledgling author is a fun and exciting time. You’re finally doing something you really enjoy and, dammit, you’re pretty good at it. You start each day reading over the literary gold you spun the day before and realize that you’re home. You’ve found your niche. If you stay with it, you’ll have a draft in around a year, give or take. Then it will only be a matter of time before your brand new novel is on the bookshelves between Connelly and Crais.

Or so I thought. But why wouldn’t I? I read what I’d written every day and it was genius. The couple members of my family whom I’d let read the book even agreed with me. Now they might have just been happy that I’d finally started writing instead of just talking about it, but they wouldn’t lie. Would they?

Still, I’m Irish and with that comes self-doubt. So, I decided that before I quit my day job and found an agent to get me the big contract, I’d better vet the work with a professional. Let someone outside the warm, snuggly, cocoon of my family and myself read what I’d written. That is the point of being an author, isn’t it? To have strangers read your work?

So, I took some night classes at UC San Diego taught by Carolyn Wheat, mystery author turned writing teacher. Well, apparently Carolyn wasn’t that good of a teacher because she failed to recognize my genius. I was shocked and disappointed. I’d paid good money and I got some flunky as a teacher. It was a beginner’s novel class and most students never really began writing so my stuff was on the whiteboard each session. It was ugly. Carolyn asked me questions that I’d never thought of, like what does your character want in a scene and what is he thinking.

It took a while, but I started to realize that Carolyn wasn’t stupid and I wasn’t a genius. It hurt. I’d jumped out of my cocoon and let strangers see my work and been slapped in the face. Hard. I lost some of that confidence earned writing in anonymity. Maybe I couldn’t do this. Maybe I wasn’t good enough and never would be. But after I stopped feeling sorry for myself (in just a few days… okay, a month) and started revising through the Carolyn’s prism, the book got better.

Then I joined a writers group and exposed my work to other writers. Like Carolyn, they tore the work apart and helped me put it back together. Stronger. After years of tearing and mending I finally felt that my manuscript was ready for an agent and then a publisher. Ten months later Yesterday’s Echo was on the bookshelves somewhere between Connelly and Crais.

Writing in a cocoon will make you feel good. Breaking out of it might get you published.

Matt Coyle