Shulman, Norm. Love, Norm: Inspiration of a Jewish American Fighter Pilot. Lubbock: Texas Tech UP, 2022.
 
Psychologist Norm Shulman first meets Greg, the boy who is to become his stepson,  when the boy is twelve. The book is many things: 1) a bit of Norm’s family history, his Polish-Jewish roots, his adolescent difficulties with math (with which I heavily identify) 2) a bit of world Jewish history, that these long-beleaguered people have always been warriors and not given proper credit for their service, and 3) letters that Norm writes to Greg while Greg is in Air Force pilot training. The latter comprises the spine of the book. Something I, as a fallen Gentile, was not aware of was the prejudice Jewish people have been subjected to concerning their military history: people claiming falsely that Jews avoid the military. Shulman does a superior job of informing readers of the many Jewish heroes (warriors) who have fought under various flags.
 
David Dragunsky is a Russian Jew who, as a tank driver, takes part in some of the most decisive battles on the eastern front of WWII. According to Shulman, “The vast majority of Jewish combat deaths, 212,000 out of a total of 270,000 occurred in this theater of war. Unfortunately, Cold War politics and propaganda prevented proper credit from being given to our Russian ally and its Jewish soldiers, but history can’t be changed” (25).Another hero of Shulman’s is Greg’s maternal grandmother, Opal Keith, who “was a member of the first regiment of Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) recruited at the beginning of World War II” (39). The author continues, week after week, letter after letter, to support his son with encouragement of this kind, reinforcing the importance of Jewish military personnel when others in flight school try to belittle or sneer at Greg’s own involvement (can antisemitism still exist in this century?). Greg gets the final word in the last chapter, in which he informs the reader of his appreciation and affection for his stepfather who has helped him through a year and a half of hellish pilot training. This is a fine book combining both the academics of history and the personal nature of memoir. It is a bold testament to a people who have suffered beyond endurance in world history, as well as at the local level, and still manage to rise to the level of hero.

Up Next:​
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Laura Pedersen
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Jody Williams
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Claude Simon
FRI: My Book World | Norm Shulman, Love, Norm: Inspiration of a Jewish American Fighter Pilot

Agus, David B. The Book of Animal Secrets: Nature’s Lessons for a Long and Happy Life. New York: Simon, 2023.
        
At first I felt this book to be a bit contrived, but as I got deeper into it, I realized that the author has a seriousness of intent and purpose. From domesticated canines to “wild” animals, he intends for us to see that we have much to learn about living from our animal friends. A few things he hammers home again and again:
1) Companionship can include animals. 2) Like pigeons, pay attention to patterns; don’t take the same route to and from work each day. 3) Keep your cardiovascular system fit. Don’t smoke. Sleep in a flat position. Maintain dental hygiene. 4) Eat a diverse diet, “but stay as close to nature as possible.” Like chimps, learn to take some risks; don’t be afraid of trial-and-error learning. 5) Teamwork, like ants employ, is always a healthy way to live. These are just a few lessons learned from our wild friends.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Sofia Coppola
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Clifton Fadiman 
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Jean Hanff Korelitz
FRI: My Book World | Amor Towles, Table for Two

Streisand, Barbra. My Name Is Barbra. New York: Viking, 2023.

Wow! How do I begin?
 
Full disclosure: I’ve been a fan of Barbra Streisand since 1962 when I was fourteen, and, from the speaker of an AM radio, emanated this crystalline voice. It lifted me across the room like a wonderful fragrance. I thought, God, I’ve got to hear more of her. And so I did. Decades of albums later (most of which I own in one medium or another). I bought both the hardcover ($31) and the Audible version ($61) of this book, so you know I’m serious when I declare I’m a fan. Her work has always cost more than that of other artists, and I’ve always paid it. You get what you pay for, and her case it is great artistry.
 
This memoir might better be subtitled as an autobiography because it covers every minute, every inch of her life—album by album, show or concert by concert, and film by film. At first, I am a bit disconcerted, as I follow along in the hardcover, that she does not read the text word for word. Her prose is quite engaging—rich and varied. But she adds so many asides, creating more of a conversational tone in her book, that I’m grateful for the audio version, as well. It must have taken her months to make the Audible recording, and yet her voice never wavers (except by way of certain emotions); it sounds as if she recorded the 900+ pages (48+ hours) in one smooth session. This woman does nothing by half.
 
And perhaps that is the crux of Streisand’s book: She means to tell her own story her own way, after decades of being misrepresented and misquoted again and again. Myth Number One: Barbra is hard to work with. Nope. She quotes from directors, actors, and other professionals she’s collaborated with that because of her exacting nature, she is a joy to work with. Because she collects discerning individuals around her, she creates a fine synergy, by which the highest quality is sought after by all. Exceptions exist, like the late Ray Stark, producer, to whom Streisand is tied for her first five films. He is a lying, conniving person who cheats her in several ways, and she can’t wait to be free of him. In some ways (creativity mainly), her career does not begin until he’s nowhere near her career.
 
Myth Number Two: Barbra loves to perform. For the first time, I learn that every time she must appear before a live crowd to sing, the experience frightens her to death. She loves performing in the studio, making albums. She is deeply emersed when appearing in or directing a film. Yet, later in her career, she does “conquer her fears,” a line of dialog I borrow from her concert in New York’s Central Park (1967). Over time, she learns to trust her audience, to include them as a collective partner.
 
Myth Number Three: Barbra is a cold b———. You should read all the adoring notes, letters, and reviews that people write. You should hear of the friendships she develops with other actors, directors, musicians, artists, and professionals close to her. Marty, her agent (manager?), at ninety-something, is still with her. Renata, her personal assistant-housekeeper-chef-chauffeur has remained with her for over sixty years. You don’t retain that kind of loyalty by being unkind.
 
Then there is the personal. Barbra confesses (we’ve always guessed) how the loss of her father at an early age affects her entire life. She describes the rocky but loving relationship with a mother who, it turns out, is so jealous of her own daughter’s success that she often turns a cold shoulder to Barbra—even skipping an important performance in Las Vegas to play the slots with her friends. Barbra shares the details of the romances in her life (those whom she loved and those who loved her): Omar Shariff, Marlon Brando, and others not so well known. An entire chapter she devotes to her husband of twenty-five years: (hello, gorgeous) James Brolin.
 
Though she may have had an editor to help her shape the book (what published writer doesn’t?), Streisand’s prose, both conversational and formal at times, is her own. After all, the woman has written screenplay treatments, screenplays, and another book besides. (Songs!) Like everything else she does, Streisand approaches this book with love and exacting detail. If you like her at all, or if you are curious, pony up and either read or listen to the book (or both, as I did). You won’t be disappointed.
 
Oh, and as a bonus, whenever Barbra Streisand explains how a certain album is developed, she includes sound snippets from the tracks to demonstrate what she is talking about. Sublime. Sublime. Sublime. Sit in on the best master class ever!

Coming Next:
​TUES: A Writer's Wit | John Dufresne
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Laura Lippman
THURS: A Writer's Wit | S. J. Perelman
FRI: My Book World | Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

It irritates my partner Ken, when I’m sometimes told I look good (or young) for my age. I make this statement not as a matter of ego or vanity (well, not entirely) but as a point of departure for a vapid little tale of humor, irony, and maybe stupidity. It’s one that began long ago.

We arrive at Star ER on the South Loop at about four p.m., and the waiting room is empty. In attempting to fill out the remarkably simple paperwork, my head drips blood onto the floor. The receptionist says not to worry; they’ll clean it up. I’m holding back the blood with a single folded tissue brought from home; it is full, a plump crimson rose. Soon I’m called back to an examining room. The man waiting on me is a middle-aged, jocular doctor with multi-striped frames and tinted lenses. He injects Lidocaine (a cousin to Novocain) into a wide swath of my forehead, some of its coolness dribbling down my face. He now cleans the wound with a stinging antiseptic that would otherwise be making me scream and proceeds to make nine surgical stitches to mend that laceration along my right eyebrow (a friend jokes that I should take a Sharpie and do my left brow so that they match, ha ha). When the doctor is done, a woman disinfects the remaining abrasions on my hands, arms, knees, and legs. The place runs a CT scan on my head, and we wait. The doctor returns and informs me there is a small bleed in my brain, and he orders an ambulance to fetch me and rush me across town to University Medical Center. But not serious enough to elicit sirens. The driver takes the Loop to Marsha Sharp Freeway, shortening the drive to seven minutes or less.

When I arrive at UMC, it is six p.m., and I’m rolled on a gurney into Trauma Unit #1. It seems as if twenty people leap upon my body at once (and in other circumstances such a situation might be rather tantalizing), but more probably the best-looking group of men and women I’ve ever seen, some medical students, some young doctors, begin to work away at me in a joint but chaotic effort. Some hands untie my shoes and remove my polka dot socks (I’m not picky about what I wear during my backyard strolls). Other hands in this kind of assault pull off my running shorts and athletic supporter (oh, really, doctor), my shirt. Next, a handsome man (even masked) in blue scrubs, a Doctor Vincent, badgers me with questions: First, my family history of diseases, and I tell him. Do I drink? Yes, socially. Socially like every day or just Saturdays? None of your business.

​And then he asks me how my accident happened. Some chatty youngsters stab holes in my left arm for IV’s (at least one of them a mistake because she happens to confess), and one hole in my right arm, I suppose for a different drip yet to come. I’m turned on my left side (“One, two, three, turn), and another set of hands pounds each vertebrae, and I am to yell (to be heard above the cacophony) “No” if it doesn’t hurt with each attack. None does. I’m asked to squeeze my butt cheeks (incidentally, one of my Pilates exercises—20 squeezes per set—designed to help keep my buttocks high and perky, meh). Good job, a male voice says not entirely with sincerity. All of these things are done to me as if I'm a plastic dummy, a doll on which to practice their pin-pricking and other medical stuff—as if I am not real.

I’m turned on my right side (“One, two, three, turn) for yet another purpose. Then I’m laid flat (without getting laid) on my back again. All of these actions take place on a thin, flat board slipped between my back and the gurney. Asked if I hurt, I must amaze all concerned, instead of complaining about the mess on my head, by informing them I have four titanium screws in my spine from a previous surgery—and that that board is fucking killing me. They plaster a pain-relieving pad across my lower back, which will remain there during my entire stay, thus relieving some of the pain caused by lying in hospital beds. Because I may be cognitively challenged after the fall, I’m bombarded with even more questions that I must answer satisfactorily, because suddenly the room empties as if my ass just isn’t up to snuff for this crowd (recall, if you will, my veiled rape metaphor).

I am now moved to an Intensive Care Unit room with only a curtain to separate me from the tumult, and an Asian woman with an ESL accent takes a long history and types it into the computer. Several times she, also a student, is helped by the youngish man who heads the main desk—his being the only bitchy personality I encounter during the weekend. Until midnight, when I am moved to a regular room, I languish on this uncomfortable bed with nothing but my thoughts. Ever since I was at Star ER I’ve run through my meditation mantras, attempting to take my mind off the obvious: injury and trauma. The mantras help a little, but they are shouted down by competing thoughts of pain, thoughts about my ruined looks, thoughts of how long I’ll be spending in this life-saving but God awful place.

Finally, at midnight, after several false starts (I easily eavesdrop on the main desk phone calls), I’m moved to a regular single room, GT-392. I ask the orderly rolling me along the hallways what GT stands for because my inquiring mind (as dinged-up as it is) wants to know. He mumbles something about it just being named that way. Yet he forgets that I can read the overhead signs as we travel through this labyrinthine building, and I note “Gerontology and Trauma” printed in large letters as we near my room. Ah haaa. Yet my placement is a blessing. Gone is the puerile chatter of ICU workers. Gone is the bustle of gurneys in and out of slamming doors. Agonizing moans and screams not my own. My GT room is quiet, and for the next thirty-six hours, I am allowed to sleep except for short interruptions to take my vitals, draw yet more blood, and whatever else the staff wish to do to me or for me (I'm served several good meals). Except for a couple of plump, gray-haired female nurses, everyone else, male or female, who enters the room, seems young. But even they are plump, out of breath if they exert themselves in any way. Serving twelve-hour shifts, it seems, these faithful servants obviously have no time to work out, to keep fit. The only rather thin, short man in blue scrubs happens to be a physician from the neurology department, who deems that I shall be released later Monday morning. Everyone who has entered my room—from orderlies, to aides, to nurses and doctors—seems to take seriously the hospital motto, “Service Is Our Passion.” So unlike the private hospital a mile and a half from here, or like hospitals from my past, in which I felt lucky to get the time of day or a response to my request radioed to the nurse’s station by that walkie talkie lying next to my head. 

Late Monday morning, a cute young blonde nurse named Kristina rushes around to help me prepare to check out. I ask if I can shower my smelly body, and she accommodates me by getting the trickle of warm water started in the walk-in shower (no scalding allowed here). She leaves to get my paperwork in order. It’s faster and cheaper to buy my new RXs from the UMC pharmacy, so Kristina also dispatches an aide downstairs to secure them for me: I happen to have cash to facilitate matters. After my shower, Kristina and I get my belongings together. I sign a bunch of paperwork, copies of it go in an already existing folder, and I am wheeled downstairs by the same aide to the front entrance, where Ken is waiting to pick me up.

Hesse, Hermann. Rosshalde. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Bantam, 1956 (1914).

Spoiler: This novel is primarily about the death of a young child, a son named Pierre. But it is also about the death of a family, how a husband and wife drift apart and divide their love between two sons, the elder “belonging” to the wife and Pierre belonging to his father. But there isn’t much belongingness for any of the family members. The book overall is about the end of their life together at the estate called Rosshalde, an expansive property, a mansion, that seems to have a life of its own. An enchanting but sad read.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | J. R. Ackerley's My Dog Tulip

Fischer, Jenna. The Actor’s Life: A Survival Guide. With a foreword by Steve Carell. Dallas: BenBella, 2017.

I’m not an actor, but I imitated one in my youth, playing a duke in third grade, singing in a high school production of Damn Yankees, and marching down the aisle in college as part of the forest ranger chorus in Little Mary Sunshine. I loved Fischer's book because during the time it took me to read it, I realized I probably didn’t have what it would have taken to become an actor. At the same time, if I had attempted such a thing, I would so have used a book like this one as a guide.

Fischer addresses all the nuts and bolts of starting out: getting head shots done (professional ones, not phone pics), building a resumé, auditioning, even the machinations of how things work on a television or film set. Most of all, Fischer lets readers in on a little secret. Although the money can be great, the real joy of an actor’s life is ACTING. Becoming a person other than yourself. Developing a feel for all of humanity by taking on various roles. I would add that acting may be the most difficult of all the fine arts: memorizing lines (sometimes in a very short timeframe), bringing those lines to life in conjunction with a script and the ensemble, becoming (insofar as possible) that other person, taking direction, leaving your ego at the door, learning ancillary skills like singing, dancing, or fencing. If you wouldn’t do it for free (and millions of actors do), then you probably wouldn’t do it well in order to make a living.

Fisher doesn’t rely on her experiences alone; she peppers the pages with sidebars of advice from other actors: “I vowed I would never do a commercial, nor would I do a soap opera—both of which I did as soon as I left the Acting Company and was starving” (52).—Kevin Kline. And in the last section of the book, Fischer cites her interviews with four working actors, and they give, at length, their take on the profession by way of sharing with readers many more good tips. A must-read for aspiring actors and people who love Jenna Fischer (and I do) alike!

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Amor Towles's  The Lincoln Highway: a Novel

Raven, Catherine. Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship. New York: Spiegal and Grau, 2021.

A woman lives in a blue steel-roofed house she builds in an area of western U.S. wilderness that is at least thirty minutes from any burg that might be called civilized. With a PhD in biology, the woman lives in her crude dwelling year round and teaches at nearby schools. And she lives alone. Only she isn’t really. She names two cedar trees on her property Gin and Tonic. She names magpies, one of whom, in a strange scenario, will give up her life on behalf . . . well, that’s a spoiler . . . you will want to discover that tale on your own.
 
This woman, the author, is befriended by a fox, a red fox, a species whose adult male weighs no more than six pounds, and must survive, as parable and history tell us, by their wits and cunning. She often reads to Fox (no article, a no-name unlike her other friends) on his mostly daily trips to her property about four in the afternoon. First, she reads to him from St. Ex’s (Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s) The Little Prince. And later, Moby Dick. He seems to be lulled or convinced that she is one of him by the way she does not talk down to him or speak baby talk. He even receives his own sections of the book in which author Raven encourages him to give voice to his point of view (he calls her Hurricane Hands for occasionally extravagant nonverbal communication). 
 
Spoiler: Hurricane Hands loses Fox twice, once in the middle of the book when she sees a mangy dead fox, and once at the end (you know it will happen). Here is the magical portrayal of her mistaken conclusion, when, at one twilight, Fox parades his four kits, the ultimate act of trust, in front of the author:

Near the end of the book, the author, who has thought so highly of Fox, makes an error by planting a little cactus near her front door where Fox usually lies when he visits. The next time he stops by he says, “Quah,” his one-word vocabulary, holds up his paw, then drops it and catches a toenail on the edge of the plant, casting her a look over his back as he retreats. She transplants the cactus again, and Fox thanks her the next day by lying down. Raven tells us that if we wanted to, we could tame or domesticate foxes within four or five generations. But we shouldn’t. Instead, if each of us were to have such an uncommon friendship with just one non-domesticated animal, the world would be transformed to one where loneliness would become obsolete and the natural world would flourish.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | TBD

Smith, Alison. Name All the Animals. New York: Scribner, 2004.

If I had had the time, I would have read Name All the Animals in one sitting. In this memoir, the author begins benignly by sharing with readers in great detail how close she and her brother Roy are at ages nine and twelve, respectively, so close that their mother names them Alroy. Together, they explore an abandoned house in their neighborhood. And then, in a similar way to how it must shock the narrator and her parents, it shocks the reader to learn of Roy’s death at eighteen. The rest of the book covers several years following in which Alison finishes high school. She demonstrates how her family, good Catholics, avoid all the questions that should be asked and tackled. Alison develops an inner and outer world of her own making, all in aid of forgetting and yet commemorating her brother. In failing to grieve, however, she cuts herself off from most people until she meets one she can’t resist. Smith tells this harrowing story without sentiment but with all due regard for the truth. She structures it in such a manner that readers discover along with her how she must grow up, how she must proceed without Roy in her life.

Fellows, Will. Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest. Madison: U of Wisconsin Press, 1998.
​
This book has been on my shelf for over twenty years. If I had read it when it was new, it might have seemed fresher. As it is, the men featured here, born between 1907 and 1967, seem stuck in their contemporary argot. I wonder if gay farm boys are still experiencing the same universals, some of which dovetail well with so-called urban gays. Young farm boys seem to have more interest in growing beautiful things like gardens instead of livestock; they enjoy cooking more than being outside. Insofar as it is possible, given small rural school districts, they become involved in the arts and often excel in them. Over and over again, you see gay farm boys say they don’t care for picking up tricks or one-night stands, that they would prefer long-term relationships but that rural life makes that kind openness impossible. The reader cannot imagine the number of these men who have sex with male siblings and other relatives before they begin to engage with and marry women. Perhaps the most prevalent commonality is the harm religion, particularly Catholicism, causes young boys and men as they search for a way to express their sexuality and find a partner with whom they can share a life. Like the urban gay youth, they more often than not experience a sympathetic mother and a distant or hostile father because the gay son doesn’t fall into line. By the end, I almost felt as if I were reading the same four or five profiles over and over again. And yet I know I wasn’t. Every gay man’s story has something in common with others and every story has its differences, its unique qualities, which set that man apart.
 
What would be interesting now would be for Fellows (or some other courageous writer/scholar with boundless energy) to interview gay farm boys born between 1970 and 1995. Have their experiences been different than the generations before them? How does arranging for sex online compare to picking someone up at a bar or at some Interstate rest room? Are fathers still as intractable about masculinity and what that means? Has the world at large made any dent at all into the sequestered lives of rural Americans? This fascinating book seems to invite an ongoing discussion in which these and other questions are explored.

NEXT FRIDAY:  My Book World | Aaron Smith's The Book of Daniel: Poems

​Andrews, Julie with Emma Walton Hamilton. Home Work. New York: Hachette, 2019.
 
Andrews begins the book with a summary of her first memoir, Home, that came out in 2009, which is a good thing. It induces the reader to want to locate a copy (for the details must be juicy), as well as it gives readers a view of what her early life was like before she became famous and moved to Hollywood to work.
 
Unlike many memoirs which can be of a meandering nature, this one moves quickly from one locale to the next, one creative project to the next, one family crises to the next with little reflection, except by way of journal entries from the time period Andrews is calling to mind. Having said that, I believe Andrews moves from locale to locale because that is the nature of the business she is in. In making a film, she must relocate to where the project is being shot. With regard to each film there are preproduction stories, stories during the shooting, and then stories about when the film or live show opens—the reviews, both good and bad. And I’m sorry, of course, Ms. Andrews does reflect upon the relationships she has with her two husbands, her daughter by the first one, the step children she acquires (happily) from her second husband, her siblings and her Moms and Dads, plus the two daughters that she and Blake Edwards adopt from Vietnam. Julie reflects, but it’s often a hand-wringing followed, most of the time, by things turning out all right.

​Still, the memoir has more than a few amusing anecdotes. My favorite involves one with Mike Nichols and Carol Burnett. The three are staying in the same hotel as Julie and Carol prepare for their joint TV special. He wants to meet late at night after his train has been delayed, and the women agree. They get into their pajamas and robes and when they know he’s in the hotel, they wait for him at the elevators. They decide it would be funny if they are kissing when Nichols gets off the elevator:

​Anyone like me, who has followed the career of Ms. Andrews from Mary Poppins until now, will appreciate the depths to which she mines her soul to share once again with us her life and her talents. It’s quite a ride. 

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | TBD

Cep, Casey. Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee. New York: Knopf, 2019.

This fascinating book unfolds by way of three sections. In the first, Cep brings to life a decades-old Alabama story of insurance fraud in which one Rev. Willie Maxwell begins buying up life insurance policies on relatives and others close to him. If that isn’t unusual enough, then each one of those persons begins to die in car “accidents” or by other strange circumstances. Even stranger, Cep makes clear, is that for some reason law enforcement cannot seem to pin these crimes on the prime suspect: Willie Maxwell. When Maxwell attends the funeral of the last victim, a relative of the deceased pulls out a revolver and kills the minister.
 
The second section of the book is about the attorney who not only helps the minister stay out of prison for years previous to the murder but who is so skilled that he gets an acquittal for the minister’s murderer. The attorney himself is a colorful figure, a liberal Democrat who throws caution to the wind and runs for office. After he wins, his actions are too liberal for some and he is harassed (in a dangerous KKK style) out of office, never running again. Along the way, he makes friends with author Harper Lee, known for her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.
 
The reason the two become acquainted is that Harper Lee is attempting to write a book, à la her friend Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, about the Reverend (The Reverend also being her working title). After all, when Mockingbird was finished, Lee had little to do, and not yet much money, so Capote hired Lee as his assistant to help him research his book. And what a great assistant she was. Cep makes clear that, in all, Lee offers Capote at least 150 pages of typewritten notes. Her talent is combing the physical landscape for specific details; his has more to do with affect, interviewing the related parties, getting them to open up. Lee spends years apparently applying the same journalistic skills to the Maxwell case, but she ultimately abandons the book, believing she just doesn’t have enough information to make it a great book. Cep’s portrayal of Lee is one that readers may not be familiar with: an alcoholic (she eventually, unlike Capote, gets clean); a millionaire who lives, in some ways, like the poorest among her; someone who writes because she loves it, not because she must make a living from it; her own kind of philanthropist, taking care of people and causes she believes in.
 
Cep weaves together these three strands into one compelling narrative which contributes to even a larger picture: a last gasp of the Old South and its many, many contradictions. A descendant of a slave who allegedly kills members of his own race. A liberal attorney who attempts to evolve the white race in his home state of Alabama. And a writer, childhood friends with Truman Capote, who may be more Libertarian than Liberal, never really finding her rightful place in the American canon of literature.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | TBD

Houston, Pam. Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country. New York: Norton, 2019.

Pam Houston may be the single best teacher of writing in the U.S. today, not only by way of her classroom techniques (which I know of firsthand) but by way of example, and Deep Creek proves my case. Houston’s main tenet, always, is to begin with the concrete details—whether fiction or nonfiction—and those details will lead you to your narrative.

​And once again, as in all Houston’s stories, novels, or essays, she mines the glimmers in her life to reveal to readers her twenty-five year acquaintance with a patch of land high in the Colorado Rockies, at the headwaters of the Rio Grande, her ranch; the extreme physical, sexual, and emotional abuse her parents heaped upon her; the nanny, Martha Washington, who was more of a mother to her than anyone; obtaining the ranch property and hanging onto it by a thread at times, both financially and in terms of the physical world which, where she lives, has an extreme impact on human life whether it be the winter temperatures and snow and ice or a hundred-year fire or human encroachment. Many metaphors guide her. She lives by a purely spiritual (not religious) guide: What are the best ways for me to be kind to others and to the earth I live on, and how can I leave both better off before I leave this earth? Because of her childhood abuse, Pam grows up always on guard, always ready to leap into the future, and that is how she often lives: running literally to all four corners of our, at times, flat earth. She is invited or invites herself to some of the most strenuous and exhilarating ventures around. And in this book she makes each one of them shine, or glimmer.

Chee, Alexander. How to Write an Autobiographical
       Novel: Essays. Boston: Houghton, 2018.

​This collection of essays is a staggering one. In the way that fiction writers link short stories, Chee links essays to explicate how he works as a fiction writer. His metaphors are simple yet profound. His advice is wrenched from the heart, and yet at no time does he allow sentimentality to interfere with his message. The entire collection—like a group of short stories, like a novel—possesses a narrative arc that is subtle, inching readers toward the climax, easing into a quiet denouement. The book seems nonlinear, but Chee glides readers from a few youthful months spent in Mexico becoming fluent in Spanish, to his older youth in college with Annie Dillard as a professor, to his maturation into an astute, caring professor of creative writing, to the publication of his first novel and how it explores and ultimately exposes the biggest secret of his life. 
 
The Publishing Triangle, a long-established organization for LGBTQ writers based in New York, recently awarded this work the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction. I hope, as a tour de force, it will win even more accolades in the coming months or years. Chee is a remarkable writer, and anyone who takes a seminar from him ought to feel fortunate.

NEXT TIME: My Journey of States-41  Nevada