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A Writer's Wit: Laura Lippman

1/31/2023

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In my newspaper days, your endings could be literally sliced off in the composing room, so it was dangerous to get attached to them. Yet I think this has made me work harder on endings in fiction.
​Laura Lippman
Author of ​Lady in the Lake
​Born January 31, 1959
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L. Lippman
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Muriel Spark

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Havelock Ellis
FRI: My Book World | George Saunders's A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
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'Shy' She Is Not

1/27/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
Curtsy while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time.
​Lewis Carroll
Author of ​Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
​Born January 27, 1832
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L. Carroll

My Book World

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Rodgers, Mary and Jesse Green. Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers. New York: Farrar, 2022.

I’ve been a huge fan of comic Carol Burnett my entire life. I remember her belting out a song called “Shy,” when she appeared in a TV version of the play, Once Upon a Mattress. By today’s standards, it was a simple production and recorded on kinescope for us now to cherish by way of YouTube. The one highlight is Burnett as the princess singing “Shy” with some irony, her mouth open wide, her lungs full of air, no microphone needed. The thing I don’t know or realize at the time is that the music is written by the author of this book, Mary Rodgers—the younger daughter of composer Richard Rodgers.
 
Mary Rodgers’s book is co-written with Jesse Green, a lifelong friend. Rodgers at one point attempts to pen the book herself, yet always gets bogged down. But you’re a storyteller, Jesse tells her, a talker! So Mary tells her stories to Jesse, and Jesse does more than write them down. He creates a great book, handing over each draft to Mary for approval, until they arrive at what is this tome.
 
The title may not be quite so ironic when applied to Mary. Although she in many ways is bold, she is always reigned in, first of all, by her parents. Her mother, probably jealous of her daughter’s talent (this learned from Mary’s many hours on analysts’ sofas), belittles her and her work. Richard Rodgers, her famous father, is also begrudging with regard to how much time he spends with his daughter. Mary Rodgers (b. 1931) is an early feminist without the crusading. She must fight her way into every project she obtains until she reaches a certain point (probably when Mattress becomes a huge hit). Even after that, she doesn’t always get the big projects. Her fame comes more or less from writing projects for children.
 
In fact, she must love children a great deal, giving birth to six of her own (three each by two different husbands), one dying quite young. Her legacy, as she tells it, may to be a better parent than composer. She tries, in vain sometimes, to be a better mother than her own mother was. Ultimately she realizes she may not be able to have it all, as more recent feminists realize. At least not without a lot of help, women can’t have it all. (We’re talking the hiring of tutors, governesses, child caregivers, not to mention lots of domestic help—something available only to the wealthy.) At any rate, this memoir is enjoyable to read on many levels. Not always the greatest prose (transcription of an oral work seems to miss out on the finishing touches that grammar and phrasing can give it), with perhaps far too many footnotes that could have been incorporated into the main text, this memoir is still a pleasant and entertaining read.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Laura Lippman

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Muriel Spark
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Havelock Ellis
FRI: My Book World | George Saunders: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain


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A Writer's Wit: Mary Mapes Dodge

1/26/2023

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[On the Netherlands:] There is not a richer or more carefully tilled garden spot in the whole world than this leaky, springy little country.
​Mary Mapes Dodge
Author of ​Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates
​Born January 26, 1831
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M. M. Dodge
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Shy: 
The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Laura Lippman
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Muriel Spark
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Havelock Ellis
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A Writer's Wit: Somerset Maugham

1/25/2023

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If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony to it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
​Somerset Maugham
Author of Of Human Bondage
Born January 25, 1874
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S. Maugham
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Mary Makes Dodge
FRI: My Book World | Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers
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A Writer's Wit: Vicki Baum

1/24/2023

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A writer should always have some profession which brings him into close contact with the realities of life.
​Vicki Baum
Author of ​Grand Hotel
Born January 24, 1888
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V. Baum
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Somerset Maugham

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Mary Mapes Dodge
FRI: My Book World | Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers
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Krouse Tells 'Everything' and More

1/20/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
Free societies are societies in which the right of dissent is protected.
​Natan Sharansky
Author of 
Never Alone: Prison, Politics, and My People
​Born January 20, 1948
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N. Sharansky

My Book World

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Krouse, Erika. Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation. New York: Flatiron, 2022.

Krouse, a fine novelist and short story writer (I became acquainted with her work in The New Yorker), turns to nonfiction in this book. She lives in Colorado where she secures a job as a private investigator for an attorney who is attempting to litigate against the town’s university (you don’t have to comb your memory for long to realize she’s talking about the University of Colorado). In her developing career—she informs her boss during her interview that she is not a PI—she learns to interview victims of sexual violence at the hands of the university’s potential recruits, contemporary football players, and coaching staff (at least by way of their complicity). It is a case that continues for six years until it is “resolved” (you’ll have to read the book to see what that means). 
 
Throughout this narrative, Krouse weaves in her own story of sexual abuse. Seems as a child, the man living with her mother, known to readers as X, begins abusing her at age four and continues for a number of years. This abuse colors all her relationships, of course, with both men and women. At a certain age, she refuses to be in the same room with X, a stance her mother does not approve. In fact, at one point, her mother “disowns” her for a fairly flimsy excuse concerning Krouse’s wedding details. Oh, and into the narrative is also woven her relationship with a sensitive guy, who turns out to be the man she marries. Krouse must learn to live without her biological family (her brother the only one who deigns to speak to her, usually on the down low), and so she forms a new one with her husband and a number of other close friends.
 
The case? The university sustains huge losses because of the scandal, and many people at the top are let go, very gingerly, because the university doesn’t need any more litigation or loss of income. For example, the head football coach is fired, but the university must pay out his contract for several million. Erika Krouse continues to work for the attorney, but the cases seem like light-lifting compared to the sexual assault case. She enjoys having acquired the skills she has learned: research, interviewing, counseling (insomuch as she can) to win over informants and witnesses. A very fine book about a horrible subject, one our society has yet to deal with in a uniform fashion. Women and girls deserve NOT to be assaulted in any manner by any male. Period.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Vicki Baum

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Somerset Maugham
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Mary Mapes Dodge
FRI: My Book World | Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers

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A Writer's Wit: Patricia Highsmith

1/19/2023

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Possible basis for my weltanschauung. That the childishness is never lost, but adulthood put like a veneer over it. We think inside like children, react, and have their desires. The outside manners are an absurd puff of conceit.
​[Diaries and Notebooks 5/19/41, age 20]
​Patricia Highsmith
Author of ​The Two Faces of January
Born January 19, 1921
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P. Highsmith
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World |Erika Krouse's ​Tell Me Everything
TUES: A Writer's Wit | 
Vicki Baum
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Somerset Maugham
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers
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A Writer's Wit: Binyavanga Wainaina

1/18/2023

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There is no country in the world with the diversity, confidence and talent and black pride like Nigeria.
​Binyavanga Wainaina
Author of How to Write About Africa
Born January 18, 1971
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B Wainaina
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Patricia Highsmith
FRI: My Book World | Erika Krouse's Tell Me Everything
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A Writer's Wit: David Ebershoff

1/17/2023

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“Isn't a gay Mormon like an oxymoron?”
“Do I look like an oxymoron to you?”
“An oxymormon.”
​David Ebershoff
Author of ​The Danish Girl
​Born January 13, 1969
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D. Ebershoff
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Binyavanga Wainaina

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Patricia Highsmith
FRI: My Book World | Erika Krouse's Tell Me Everything
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'Evidence of Love': An Old Story

1/13/2023

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 A WRITER'S WIT
If you record the world honestly, there's no way people can stop being funny. A lot of fiction writing doesn't get that idea, as if to acknowledge it would trivialize the story or trivialize human nature, when in fact human nature is reduced and falsified if the comic aspects are not included.
​Lorrie Moore
Author of ​Anagrams
​Born January 13, 1957
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L. Moore

My Book World

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Bloom, John and Jim Atkinson. Evidence of Love. Austin: Texas Monthly, 1983.

This true-crime book holds a particular interest for me because I attended college with the two principals, Betty Pomeroy Gore and Allan Gore. I stood next to Allan in the a cappella choir, and Betty was born and raised in the small Kansas town where my grandparents lived. Betty and Allan married five months before my fiancée and I did, so I have some affinity for their story. On June 13, 1980, when we are all in our early thirties, Betty Gore is murdered apparently with a three-foot ax. The last person to see her alive, other than her infant daughter, is her friend Candy Montgomery. Only they aren’t exactly friends any longer. According to trial records, when Candy drops by to see about the Gore’s older daughter spending the night at the Montgomery house and picking up the child’s swimsuit, Betty asks Candy if she is having an affair with her husband, Allan. Candy says no, but when Betty asks her if she had an affair with him, Candy confirms it.
 
The word “yes” begins their long and bizarre story. The two women talk quietly about it, Candy proclaiming that the affair has been over for eight months. This does not satisfy Betty. She leaves the room and comes back from the utility room with a big ax. Somehow the following fracas winds up in that little room. Candy claims that Betty says, “I have to kill you,” and raises the ax. Candy’s head and foot both receive “minor” injuries, but worse, something in Candy’s subconsciousness is unleashed, a rage, and, instead of getting out of that place with her life, she finds herself in a life-and-death struggle for the ax. And when she wrangles it away, she (in echoes of Lizzie Borden) gives her friend over forty whacks—most of them while the victim’s heart is still beating.
 
The story is fascinating, not just because I knew the Gores on a degree of separation of, say, a faded one, but it is universal to many fallen church people. All these people are good Christians, active in their local communities, and still something heinous like this can happen. After evading the police for weeks, Candy is finally confronted and charged with the murder. Her trial, in North Texas’s Collin County adjacent to Dallas, is a circus of media hounds, theatrical lawyers, and one recalcitrant and tyrannical judge.
 
By the way, I read this book the first time it came out. Made not a mark in it. Just read it straight through to get the facts, ma’am, just the facts. This reading, I believe I felt a much stronger empathy for young parents who are dissatisfied with their apparently happy marriages, a better understanding that life is not always black and white. Though the story is over forty years old, it remains a cautionary tale for bored suburban housewives who think that a brief affair might bring them a bit of excitement to their dull lives. And perhaps it is a lesson already learned, for more women than ever are a part of the workforce, lead mostly satisfying lives of work and family—as much as any man. In any case, it is a story I shall not soon forget.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | 
David Ebershoff 
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Binyavanga Wainaina
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Patricia Highsmith
FRI: My Book World | Erika Krouse's Tell Me Everything

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A Writer's Wit: Jack London

1/12/2023

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A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog. 
​Jack London
Author of ​White Fang
​Born January 12, 1876
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J. London
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World |Bloom & Atkinson's Evidence of Love
TUES: A Writer's Wit | 
David Ebershoff
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Binyavanga Wainaina
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Patricia Highsmith
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A Writer's Wit: Aldo Leopold

1/11/2023

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We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
​Aldo Leopold
Author of A Sand County Almanac
​Born January 11, 1887
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A. Leopold
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Jack London
FRI: My Book World | Bloom and Atkinson's Evidence of Love
0 Comments

A Writer's Wit: Pat Benatar

1/10/2023

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Most chick singers say “If you hurt me, I'll die”
​. . . I say, “If you hurt me, I'll kick your ass.”
​Pat Benatar
Songwriter: "Hit Me with Your Best Shot"
​Born January 10, 1953
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P. Benatar
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Aldo Leopold

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lack London
FRI: My Book World | Bloom & Atkinson's Evidence of Love
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Mother and Daughter: Oil and Water

1/6/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
I do a tremendous amount of rewriting. I just obsessively rewrite. Although sometimes there are sections, sometimes you're just lucky and a paragraph will just kind of come out. And that's great. But that's not ordinary in a day's work.
​Elizabeth Strout
Author of Amy and Isabelle
​Born January 6, 1956
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E. Strout

My Book World

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Strout, Elizabeth. Amy and Isabelle. New York: Vintage, 1998.

I regret that this, Strout’s first book, is my most recent one read, after having perused five other Strout books previously. The novel is indeed a tour de force, worthy of premiering a writing career. In it Strout tells the story of titular characters Amy and Isabelle, daughter and mother respectively. It is one of the hottest summers on record in Shirley Falls, a New England town in the 1970s. The site’s yellowing river exudes a strong Sulphur smell. No one has air conditioning, and everyone is hot all the time, in every dwelling whether it is at home or at work. Years before Isabelle has come to Shirley Falls with a baby in her arms. Her husband has died, she tells everyone. Now Amy is seventeen, and her mother is youngish, in her thirties.

Readers in essence become acquainted with the entire town. All of Isabelle’s co-workers in an office where she is the boss’s secretary: Fat Bev and a number of other notable characters. There are Amy’s school friends, particularly Stacy, who is pregnant, and, being the daughter of two mental health workers, is allowed to have her baby and give it up for adoption. The two friends share lunch each day sitting in the nearby woods and smoking a single cigarette each (Stacy hides them in a Tampon carrier kept in her school bag). They are close, yet there are secrets about themselves they never reveal to the other, things that might make one dislike the other (each fears). There is Amy’s middle-aged math teacher, a bearded man, not particularly handsome, but charismatic enough to lure Amy into an illicit relationship. There is the disappearance of a girl about the girls’ age from another town, a story that sends shivers up and down the backs of everyone in Shirley Falls. All of these people have ordinary but messy lives, even though the town is beset with an active church life divided among a number of denominations. Even so, an undercurrent of unease, perhaps some might say evil, brings all these souls together in a manner that keeps one reading as fast as one can.

But one should not read too fast, because by doing so one can buzz by the small and delicious details that Strout plants along the way. Pregnant teenage girl. Middle-age man lovingly seducing his pupil. An ambitious mother with a dark past of her own. Oh, and several adulterous affairs. How could it be a boring narrative? And yet, the novel is not a potboiler in the traditional sense. There is no cathartic ending in which all the bad people get their comeuppance. No real heroes—except in the way that true friends can be heroic to each other. The story ends as satisfyingly quiet as it begins. Yes, after a long, hot summer, where the inhabitants of Shirley Falls are frying in the hell of their lives, the sky opens up and the heavens pour forth rain, providing at last a natural relief. Finally, the characters of Shirley Falls may breathe again. Until the next wave of heat develops.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Pat Benatar
 
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Also Leopold
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Jack London
FRI: My Book World | Bloom & Atkinson's ​Evidence of Love

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A Writer's Wit: Brian Tracy

1/5/2023

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Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.
​Brian Tracy
Author of 
The Power of Self-Confidence: Become Unstoppable, Irresistible, and Unafraid in Every Area of Your Life
​Born January 5, 1944
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B. Tracy
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World |Elizabeth Strout's Amy and Isabelle
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Pat Benatar

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Aldo Leopold
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Jack London
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A Writer's Wit: Natalie Goldberg

1/4/2023

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Whether we know it or not, we transmit the presence of everyone we have ever known, as though by being in each other’s presence we exchange our cells, pass on some of our life force, and then we go on carrying that other person in our body, not unlike springtime when certain plants in fields we walk through attach their seeds in the form of small burrs to our socks, our pants, our caps, as if to say, “Go on, take us with you, carry us to root in another place” This is how  we survive long after we are dead. This is why it is important who we become, because we pass it on.
​Natalie Goldberg
Author of 
Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku
​Born January 4, 1948
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N. Goldberg
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Brian Tracy
FRI: My Book World | Elizabeth Strout's Amy and Isabelle
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A Writer's Wit: Katie Porter

1/3/2023

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Congress wasn't built for members like me. For those of us who have young children, which is a minority, there's definitely the built-in assumption of a two-parent model . . . . There is no template for how to do this in my situation as a single mom.
​Katie Porter
U.S. Representative from California's 45th Congressional District 
​Born January 3, 1974
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K. Porter
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Natalie Goldberg

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Brian Tracy
FRI: My Book World | Elizabeth Strout's Amy and Isabelle
0 Comments
    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

    See my profile at Author Central:
    http://amazon.com/author/rjespers


    Richard Jespers's books on Goodreads
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