reflections on teaching in Rome - and on reading eightball by elizabeth geoghegan

When I lived in Italy ten years ago, I taught writing at the American University of Rome.  It was a tiny college on the top of the Gianicolo, downhill from the American Academy and surrounded by umbrella pines. Across the road was a beautiful park and on the corner the Archi Bar where we always went for coffee in between classes.  My students were Americans and Europeans,  mostly Italians with American connections and Americans with Italian roots who wanted to reclaim their heritage whilst following an American curriculum.

What a beautiful place it was for me to land, as a writer and teacher and wife of an American diplomat.  We were posted in Rome for a four year tour, and had two sons in middle and high school, but I found at AUR  a place I could pursue my own professional life.   The campus with its graveled walks had small classrooms overlooked the city. I taught composition and literature there.  At one stage, I even taught business writing.  But what I taught didn't matter as much as my students mattered to me. I loved my students and all of us knew we were experiencing something amazing together, living here in Rome.

some of my students and me pretending to smoke chocolate finger biscuits.

Which brings me to Elizabeth Geoghegan,  treasured colleague and dear friend.  Like me, Elizabeth was a writer and dedicated teacher.  She was also a free spirit, living in Rome on her own terms.  When we first met, she looked at me a little skeptically standing there in a doorway at the college overlooking the courtyard. She was smoking and looking through me as I talked: who are you, she seemed to ask.

But yet we were a similar type.  In fact, people occasionally confused us with each other.  The provost frequently mistook me for Elizabeth.   Elizabeth, she'd say. No, I'd reply,  I'm Amanda.  Hmm.. Really?  As if I didn't know who I was.

I guess it was because we were both iconoclasts, writers and eccentrics.  As such, when we met together over  coffee, we found ourselves talking about what we both loved and connected on: books and writing, our students and the men in our lives, our struggles to get published and the difficulty of living as expats.

That was me and Elizabeth.  She was my literary touchstone for four years, while I was trying to get a book published, and she was trying to get her stories published.   Oh, my agent  in London was always sure my book was going to be a great big hit. Then she dropped that book like a hot potato and while I wrote another book, Elizabeth was there through it all.  I was also there for her, while she went through her own publication throes - submitting wonderful stories,  getting them rejected or just plain overlooked.  What we wanted to achieve in our writing seemed to be  at odds with the market,  even though we both had friends who had found themselves amongst the so called anointed.  Still, we lived on the fringes.

But oh, what fringes they were!

One semester, a colleague who was supposed to get tenure was shockingly denied it and then disappeared.  Suddenly Elizabeth and I were about the only writing teachers on campus to be trusted. So we decided to set up a Writing Center.   We took over the top floor of one of the buildings at AUR where there was a little terrace looking across Ancient Rome. In our tiny unheated office on the top of the Gianicolo I  remember saying, " Elizabeth - this is it!  We are actually doing it RIGHT NOW! It doesn't matter about our books or what we're being paid. Here we are actually DOING it, while no one is watching! LOOK WHERE WE ARE! We can shape the writing program at this college!

And we did.

A year or so later, both of us having been denied the opportunity of a full time job at AUR, we both moved on. I went back to the United States, taught at Northern Virginia Community College and ultimately ended up as a bookseller at Politics and Prose. One of my novels was published by an independent UK press.  Meanwhile Elizabeth stayed in Rome and her stories did the rounds, and then her extraordinary novella The Marco Chronicles was picked up by Shebooks  and published to great acclaim.

But what about her more literary stories?  They have now been published in this wonderful collection  eightball.  I have read these stories repeatedly. I read them ten years ago and I read them again this month, and still they resonate. They are lyrical, funny, heartbreaking and hip.  They are tragic even in their humor. In words she applies to her characters, they are "hipper than thou" and "caught between rancor and desolation."

Their settings span from Rome to Paris to South East Asia. On one level they are evocative beautifully written travelogues.  But really, it's Elizabeth's characters who breathe life into these places, even as they pass through.   Elizabeth's characters'  most heartfelt moments are often experienced alone, while their passionate connections with others, though intense, are short lived.  My favorite story of the collection is The Violet Hour - which I read in its earliest stages, and which affected me then as it affects me now, for its badass beauty,  its courage, its longing and ultimately its heartbreak.

Elizabeth Geoghegan has given us a memorable collection here.  These stories are Elizabeth  through and through,  and at her finest. The Marco Chronicles was fucking great.  Reading that book was like sitting with Elizabeth in a cafe and listening to her war stories, her wicked one liners  and intelligent take downs of men and the dating scene in Rome.  This collection goes deeper.  This is Elizabeth at her heartbreaking and lyrical best - full of insight into what it means to be a strong independent woman looking for connection and love in the world.  It will capture your heart.  It will make you laugh, it will make you cry and you will not forget it.

#elizabethgeogheganeightball  #eightballstories #greatshortstories #shortstoryrome

what more of my bookseller colleagues are reading

A few weeks ago,  I posted book recommendations from some of my colleagues at Politics and Prose Bookstore.  It was so much fun that I've decided to continue and make it a regular feature.  I cannot say enough how much I love and respect my colleagues at the store. It seems we can talk about anything when we link it to the books we are reading - and that also means we can be fully ourselves. I love the range of our reading material.  That's why I am sure  you will  find something here that piques your interest.

Marija

"I've been reading Sally Rooney's Normal People. The writing is so effortless but on point, and the emotions and thoughts ring true.  It makes me wonder,  are we trying to be normal to fit in, or trying to find someone we fit in with?"

Adam

 "I'm reading Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black.  It's a book she wrote before she wrote Wolf Hall, which made her name.  But this is not historical fiction.  It's kind of a horror novel or ghost story. But really it's about two people and modern British life, and the hollowness of life in these sort of central tracks of Britain.  It tackles a lot of stuff from the '90s and early 2000s. It's kind of a social novel and there are some really weird creepy bits and kind of overlapping feelings.  It's pretty neat."

Gibs

"I'm reading Meader Spiral Explode. It's a bit of literary criticism by Jane Alison, who is a professor at the University of Virginia.  Basically what it does is it re-explores narrative structures,  especially in postmodern literature.  She says that instead of a typical pyramid structure for books, we should  look at how authors deviate from plot and talk about other things that give narrative structure context.  Also, how you can pick up lots of patterns while you're reading fiction. Things like that. So it's really cool. It gives you a new way to look at novels and I highly recommend it."

Sly

"I'm reading Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra. It's a fun detective crime novel set in Mumbai. The streets of India really come to life here and you get enthralled by this big showdown as the detective tries to capture an evil gang lord.  It's really fun."

Teddy

"I've been reading a book called Ambient Commons: Attention in the Age of Embodied Information by Malcolm McCullough.  I bought this book in New York City where I paid $11.00 for it, at a small used bookstore that only accepted cash.  The owner of the bookstore didn't look up from his laptop the entire time I was there. He didn't play any music in the store.  He asked for 11 units instead of dollars. But this entire experience relates very much to the kind of information that's presented in this book, which has to do with environments, the texture of environments, the spaces we inhabit - whether virtual or virtual within a real environment - and the way that form - be it a landscape or a city or any other place we inhabit, keeps its past while informing our present, even thought there might be new virtual information in it.  So, when he was looking at his laptop, and asking for 11 units, I wasn't expecting it to relate so much to the book I purchased there!"


#bookrecommendations #bookspoliticsandprose. #booksellerrecommendations

lost and wanted - what it means to grieve

Nell Freudenberger at Politics and Prose

This evening I had the privilege of introducing Nell Freudenberger at Politics and Prose to discuss her new novel Lost and Wanted.   I've been looking forward to this novel since reading her second book The Newlyweds in 2012.  In The Newlyweds she asked us to look at the perceptions of self in the marriage between an American engineer and his Bangladeshi wife, who meet on an internet dating app.

In preparing to introduce this evening's event, I went back to look at a review I'd written of The Newlyweds for Washington Independent Review of Books and  saw that I'd quoted an interesting passage.

"You thought you were a permanent part of your own experience, the net that held it all together - until you discovered that there were many selves, dissolving into one another so quickly over time that the buildings and the trees and even the pavement turned out to have more substance than you did."  Freudenberger returns to this same idea in Lost and Wanted  - but she expands upon it in new  ways.

The narrator in Lost and Wanted is a physics professor at MIT who is mourning the death of her Harvard roommate Charlie.   Helen is known for her work on five dimensional spacetime, but when she receives a text message from Charlie after Charlie's death, she looks back on the friendship and revisits memories that alter with perspective.

As the novel progresses, we see Charlie through the eyes of other people: grieving parents, her husband and her daughter.  It's a novel about parenting, surrogacy, career choices and what it means to grieve, and it's as intellectually rich as it is emotionally resonant.

At tonight's event the audience asked some fascinating questions.  One guy talked about his brother -only one and a half years separated from him in age, who had grown up in the same household, and yet who now was lost to him, in that they were on completely different wave lengths. Were this man not his brother, the speaker maintained, they would not have a thing in common.

Yet at the same time, he remarked that he also had friends he hasn't seen for decades.  But when he does finally see them, they instantly strike up the same rapport they enjoyed so many years before.

What does all this mean?

Dolen Perkins Valdez, author and member of the Pen/Faulkner Foundation Board of Directors, was in  conversation with Nell this evening and she raised a point about five dimensional spacetime.  Astrophysicists have been able to pick up the echos of a collision of two black holes,  she said,  ripples from 1000 years ago.  Their echoes persist, just as the echoes of grief can persist.  We think we are over grief,  but it resurfaces again and again.

This is what I'd like to know:  Why do we connect with particular people, feel we can start off again where we left off, no matter the passage of time, while even those with whom we may have daily experiences in common, can sometimes head off on a divergent mental path and become lost to us forever.

What is this question of connection and reconnection;  of parallel lives; of lives that fold over upon themselves; of threads which connect our consciousness to some, which string us together and break us apart.  And when we think of those who have died, or those who seem to be lost to us, can they feel the ripples of emotion?

These are some of the things we talked about tonight.

#lostandwanted #freudenberger

after long winter, books to celebrate spring

After difficult times, spring reminds us that everything is temporary, yes even winter and even spring.  Last spring was temporary.  This spring too - but yet it will return again and again.
There is nothing in the gnarled and blackened bark of a winter cherry tree to indicate that the next phase will be ephemeral delicate blossoms. 

After my son's surgery last week, we turned our thoughts wholeheartedly to the garden - to nourishing new growth and to reading books about gardening.

I was shelving this particular book at the store last week, when I decided to purchase a copy and bring it home.  It's a wonderful resource as we think about our garden - which lost a large silver maple earlier this year and needs a lot of TLC.

Jan Johnsen writes about focal points, points of drama and depth in the garden, about the mystery of a blue garden gate and making steps out of branches and using wood chips to cover them.  Looking though these pages is restorative. So is raking up branches, planting pots of seedlings, mulching and weeding beds.  You lose yourself in a garden and losing yourself is usually the best way to rediscover fulfillment and joy.


Another book that came my way is A Tree In The House by Annabelle Hickson.

 This book is extra special, since the author is my daughter-in-law Katie's sister.  She has an extraordinary eye for style and flower arrangement. She can make clippings from a roadside into a chaotic, exuberant arrangement. It always looks so wild and beautiful.  She and her family live on a pecan farm in New South Wales.  When we visited Australia for Alex and Katie's Australian wedding reception two years back, we took an unforgettable road trip - courtesy of Susanna and Rob - Katie's wonderful parents. For sure one of the most memorable parts of that trip was visiting Annie and Ed's pecan farm.

Katie and her nieces at the pecan farm

A Tree In The House is a feast for the eyes and spirit. It takes me back to that precious family time when I browse through its pages, looking at all the innovative arrangements for all occasions from wedding breakfasts to picnics.

the family in Annie's kitchen

  A Tree In The House is a slice of heaven in book form.


Finally, I just picked up a copy of poet CD Wright's posthumous book Casting Deep Shade.

I've never read anything quite like it. It's a homage to the beech tree -  to its spirit, its root system, its meaning for poets and its meaning for CD Wright.  The book is a beautiful object and a pleasure to hold in your hands. But I love the looseness of form here - poetry crossed with field notes, anecdotes, annotations.  It's funny and it's informative and it's touching.  Who knew the beech was such a complex and controversial tree!  You can browse this book or ponder it. As Ben Lerner says in the introduction "It is both CD's book and a loving tribute to her. To her strength and receptivity. "Beech bark is a tender thing."


#gardenbooks #treeinthehouse #gardentopia #castingdeepshade

books for the hospital waiting room

It's been a difficult week, but reading helped get me through it.   As I sat in a hospital waiting room while a family member went through a complicated surgery, there were hours to fill.  Many kinds of waiting experiences - waiting for a loved one in hospital; waiting for a loved one to be sentenced in a courthouse (ok - read my book I Know Where I Am When I'm Falling),  or even waiting in an airport departure lounge to board a long flight - have in common the odd mixture of boredom and anxiety.

When it comes to books at such times, I want one I can trust, one I can swiftly get into - and if necessary out of quickly.  But I also want something of substance.

So first I finished Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

It's written as a letter to a difficult mother who will probably never read it. It is painful and passionate, a story about identity about survival and loss. It's also about sex and coming out. “Sex can get you close to a boy. But language,” Vuong writes, “gets you deeper.”   Lines like that are plentiful in this exquisite novel. I found myself copying them down,  trying to hold onto them. This is a poet's debut novel and it cuts straight to the bone.

Who are the briefly gorgeous? All of us.  The temporal nature of love, of passion and of beauty makes this book so poignant.  Not only are the main character, Little Dog and his lover Trevor briefly gorgeous - but also Little Dog's mother and grandmother.  Their stories of leaving Vietnam, their emotional damage and vulnerability will break your heart. When his grandmother Lan is dying, she says, "I used to be a girl, Little Dog.  You know?... I used to put a flower in my hair and walk in the sun.  After big rain, I walk in the sun.  The flower I put on my ear.  So wet, so cool."

Later, Little Dog recalls stealing flowers for his grandmother from a field. Vuong writes, "It was beauty, I learned, that we risked ourselves for."

On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous is a knock out novel, elegiac in places, and I predict it will be big big big.  Release date is June, so put it on your list.



The day before my relative went into surgery,  I had the pleasure of hosting Amy Kempel for her new collection of short stories,  Sing To It.  

 In this week's New Yorker, James Wood said he couldn't get the title story out of his mind.  It's a story of less than 100 words, yet it gives us a whole relationship, in metaphors, in a gesture and in a proverb.  Amy Kempel is a master at economy. Like Vuong, she writes like a poet.  Her stories often read like prose poems.  She spoke on Sunday among other things - about paring down, about looking at each story and asking herself what she can leave out, what is necessary.  She also said that when she begins a story (and she often revises in her head), she always has both the first line and final line.

How is that possible, you wonder?

Most interestingly, she said she learned a technique of ending stories from the play 'Night Mother by Marsha Norman.  It's the penultimate line of that play that's the killer -  but the final line, which  looks like a throwaway, actually puts a finer point on the penultimate one.  I taught this play to my literature students many times, so won't spoil it here.  Just go and look it up!  You can rent an incredible film adaptation of the play starring Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft.

Oh, and let's not forget Amy Hempel's relationship to dogs.  There was a friend of hers at the store on Sunday, with his dog, and it was just so charming to watch their interaction, and to watch and be in the presence of Amy Hempel herself.  Such a joy to listen to her speak about craft.  We recorded the event at Politics and Prose, so it should be available on our website in a couple of weeks.


And finally  I want to mention another extraordinary novel of the same high quality,  one that also got me through the last few days. It's The Friend by Sigrid Nunez.

 Reading this book is like chatting with your most intelligent friend - touching on every subject of interest, from books, to writing, to teaching, and to love affairs.  And also, once again to dogs! In this book the protagonist adopts a great dane in her tiny Manhattan apartment, after the suicide of a dear friend.

 You can pick this novel up practically on any page and get from it substantive, intelligent, beautifully crafted writing.  Then if need be, you can put it down.  It was perfect for yesterday evening as I waited waited and waited some more, to finally see my beloved post surgery relative.

Books like these are breaths of fresh air and true inspirations. Hopefully they will also be that for you.

#sigridnunez #oceanvuong #amyhempel #singtoit