My Book World
In its September 19, 2011 issue, The New Yorker published Ann Beattie’s story, “Starlight.” When I later wrote about it in my blog, I said, “This story is an imaginative recreation of the Nixons’ post-Watergate life. What draws Beattie to these banal people? They seem, in many ways, the least human of all such lionized couples. Each recognizable element of the Nixons’ story is like hearing the pings of xylophone keys—even, expected, and dull.”
After reading Beattie’s Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life, I don’t feel quite the same way. Perhaps the book gives a wider range to Beattie’s motivation for writing about Pat (née Thelma) Ryan Nixon. In the chapter entitled, “My Meeting with Mrs. Nixon,” Beattie speaks of having met Mrs. Nixon and daughter Tricia at a Washington D.C. department store while Beattie and her mother were also shopping for shoes. “Every salesperson in the area was pretending not to notice the Nixons. Mrs. Nixon sat with her coat folded on a chair next to her and shopping bags on top of it. Her daughter sat on the other side, with her coat on the chair next to her. The coats and packages were blockades, in case anyone wanted to plop down and visit. My mother was not even sneaking looks; she feigned interest in a mannequin being dressed in the lingerie department” (135). I sense that Beattie’s curiosity about Mrs. Nixon was spawned from this one observation. Though they chatted, I can’t think Beattie could say she actually met, was actually presented to the First Lady of the United States;I should think it was more of a chance encounter. At any rate, Beattie writes of Pat Nixon with a keen sense of speculative interest. She’s never interviewed the woman; she’s only taken factual information from sources any of the rest of us could have read had we wished to.
What might make this book interesting to many (writers especially) is that Beattie uses it as an opportunity to share what it is like to be a novelist. To build her case she sites poet Louise Gluck’s words about post-publication jitters: “Critical assault of a finished work is painful in that it affirms present self-contempt. What it cannot do, either for good or ill, is wholly fuse, for the poet, the work and the self . . . the ostensibly exposed self, the author, is, by the time of publication, out of range, out of existence, in fact” (262). So glad to hear someone else affirm what I’ve felt upon having a piece published.
In “The Writer’s Feet Beneath the Curtain,” Beattie discusses the art of writing dialogue. “Predictable dialogue condescends to the reader and makes us yearn for what we hear between the lines; paradoxically, bad dialogue sharpens our sense of what really might be said, what is being said under the surface and off the page, at first indistinct but building to a crescendo so that finally we’re happier sinking under the surface instead of floating at the top, stranded with characters who bore us” (152). Mm. Right words in the wrong book? I wonder if this volume isn’t the fulfillment of a contractual element: so many books delivered to the publisher in so many years. And this is what Beattie—the woman who has had 49 stories published in the New Yorker since 1974—comes up with? Mm.
Beattie ends her book with this nugget (and she may be so right): “You’ll be a different you if your words are ever published, and there will be less and less possibility of ever connecting with them in the same way. You erase yourself every time you write” (266).
After reading Beattie’s Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life, I don’t feel quite the same way. Perhaps the book gives a wider range to Beattie’s motivation for writing about Pat (née Thelma) Ryan Nixon. In the chapter entitled, “My Meeting with Mrs. Nixon,” Beattie speaks of having met Mrs. Nixon and daughter Tricia at a Washington D.C. department store while Beattie and her mother were also shopping for shoes. “Every salesperson in the area was pretending not to notice the Nixons. Mrs. Nixon sat with her coat folded on a chair next to her and shopping bags on top of it. Her daughter sat on the other side, with her coat on the chair next to her. The coats and packages were blockades, in case anyone wanted to plop down and visit. My mother was not even sneaking looks; she feigned interest in a mannequin being dressed in the lingerie department” (135). I sense that Beattie’s curiosity about Mrs. Nixon was spawned from this one observation. Though they chatted, I can’t think Beattie could say she actually met, was actually presented to the First Lady of the United States;I should think it was more of a chance encounter. At any rate, Beattie writes of Pat Nixon with a keen sense of speculative interest. She’s never interviewed the woman; she’s only taken factual information from sources any of the rest of us could have read had we wished to.
What might make this book interesting to many (writers especially) is that Beattie uses it as an opportunity to share what it is like to be a novelist. To build her case she sites poet Louise Gluck’s words about post-publication jitters: “Critical assault of a finished work is painful in that it affirms present self-contempt. What it cannot do, either for good or ill, is wholly fuse, for the poet, the work and the self . . . the ostensibly exposed self, the author, is, by the time of publication, out of range, out of existence, in fact” (262). So glad to hear someone else affirm what I’ve felt upon having a piece published.
In “The Writer’s Feet Beneath the Curtain,” Beattie discusses the art of writing dialogue. “Predictable dialogue condescends to the reader and makes us yearn for what we hear between the lines; paradoxically, bad dialogue sharpens our sense of what really might be said, what is being said under the surface and off the page, at first indistinct but building to a crescendo so that finally we’re happier sinking under the surface instead of floating at the top, stranded with characters who bore us” (152). Mm. Right words in the wrong book? I wonder if this volume isn’t the fulfillment of a contractual element: so many books delivered to the publisher in so many years. And this is what Beattie—the woman who has had 49 stories published in the New Yorker since 1974—comes up with? Mm.
Beattie ends her book with this nugget (and she may be so right): “You’ll be a different you if your words are ever published, and there will be less and less possibility of ever connecting with them in the same way. You erase yourself every time you write” (266).
Secret of a Long Journey
Floricanto Press recently published the novel Secret of a Long Journey by my writer acquaintance Sandra Shwayder Sanchez of Nederland, Colorado. Check out information at www.floricantopress.com, where you can purchase copies, or at www.amazon.com. I wish Sandra, who has two other published novels, much success with this book!
Items That Don't Recycle
By now the reader realizes that I am conducting a one-person crusade to save our environment from the onslaught of materialistic consumerism. I know it’s a Herculean task, but it’s something I feel compelled to continue, even if it seems boring or redundant to others.
Did you know the Lubbock recycling centers (and perhaps those in other cities) only accept plastic items marked with PETE (1) and HDPE (2) symbols. All the rest encircled by those triangles, 3-7, they do NOT accept. I kept a few of these items out of the trash to show how many of these so-called recyclable items wind up in Lubbock landfill. Should we be asking the city why? Should we be writing them letters? Dumping this stuff on their doorstep?
Did you know the Lubbock recycling centers (and perhaps those in other cities) only accept plastic items marked with PETE (1) and HDPE (2) symbols. All the rest encircled by those triangles, 3-7, they do NOT accept. I kept a few of these items out of the trash to show how many of these so-called recyclable items wind up in Lubbock landfill. Should we be asking the city why? Should we be writing them letters? Dumping this stuff on their doorstep?
My niece gave me a book for Christmas, The Geography of Bliss by journalist Eric Weiner. To research the book he made a project of visiting ten countries—trying to find out what factors were involved in making individuals (or cultures) happy.
While visiting Bhutan he found these words on a handwritten sign:
When the last tree is cut,
When the last river is emptied,
When the last fish is caught,
Only then will Man realize that he can not eat money (57)
I’m not sure the Bhutan writer is correct. Perhaps not even then will we as a culture realize money is indigestible.
When the last tree is cut,
When the last river is emptied,
When the last fish is caught,
Only then will Man realize that he can not eat money (57)
I’m not sure the Bhutan writer is correct. Perhaps not even then will we as a culture realize money is indigestible.
Mescalero Apache Territory
Easter weekend Ken and I were guests of a friend at Inn of the Mountain Gods near Ruidoso, New Mexico. From Lubbock (and at our pace, which included two potty stops), it is about a four-and-a-half-hour drive. The Apache people work very hard to make the guest’s experience a great one. Every employee we came in contact with was not only friendly but kind and patient—which is probably more than the typical (mostly Texas) tourist deserves. One man, who is a valet/bellman, remembers us each time we’re there, recalling (with uncanny accuracy) when he saw us last (we’ve only been three times in as many years). Even the non-Apache employees follow suit in their behavior. At Wendell’s (the hotel restaurant named after the late Apache President, Wendell Chino), some of the wait staff have worked there for ten years or more. They approach each table of clients with the greatest of deference and yet manage to be neither obsequious nor rude, despite some fairly eccentric behavior on the part of certain (mostly Texas) guests. This manifestation of the hotel/casino opened in 2005. It is as well designed and appointed as any world-class hotel, yet its rates are reasonable. And if you gamble, your dollars are converted to “points” you can use toward paying for cuisine at Wendell's. I’m not, I promise you, on their advertising staff. I’m only saying it’s a great little year-around getaway (some great skiing in winter) for anyone living within a three hundred mile radius. Check it out.
Next Month
In May we will visit the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. Built by the widow of Wal-Mart's Sam Walton, the museum holds some of the finest paintings in the world (to the chagrin of many collectors and curators). I hope to have a tale or two to tell, and some photos, as well. See you then.
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