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A WRITER'S WIT: LORENE SCAFARIA

5/1/2025

It's really hard as a screenwriter, you feel like you have a vision and then you turn it over to a director and you have to let it go.
Lorene Scafaria, Screenwriter
Author of Under the Boardwalk
Born May 1, 1978

L. Scafaria

Up Next:
FRI: My Book World | Wright Thompson, The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi [Emmett Till]
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret C. Nussbaum
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Edward Gibbon

A WRITER'S WIT: JOHN BOYNE

4/30/2025

I don't buy into the idea that an Irish writer should write about Ireland, or a gay writer should write about being gay.
John Boyne
Author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Born May 30, 1971

J. Boyne

Up Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lorene Scafaria
FRI: My Book World | Wright Thompson, The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi [Emmett Till]

A WRITER'S WIT: ROD MCKUEN

4/29/2025

Cats have it all—admiration, an endless sleep, and company only when they want it.
Rod McKuen, Songwriter and Poet
Author of In Someone's Shadow
Born April 29, 1938

R. McKuen

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | John Boyne
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lorene Scafaria
FRI: My Book World | Wright Thompson, The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi [Emmett Till]

MYTH OF NORMAL EXPLICATED

4/25/2025

A WRITER'S WIT
Our nation has had a long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination . . . rationalized by an attitude of “romantic paternalism” which, in practical effect, put women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.
William Joseph Brennan
Author of Conscience of the Court
Born April 25, 1906

W. J. Brennan

MY BOOK WORLD

Maté, Gabor, with Daniel Maté. The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture. New York: Avery, 2022.

Maté’s thesis is that Western medicine has assumed for a long time what is “normal,” and what is not. He contends that our physical and physiological lives are severely affected by what happens and what does not happen to us in our childhoods:

“Children, especially highly sensitive children, can be wounded in multiple ways: by bad things happening, yes, but also by good things not happening, such as their emotional needs for attunement not being met, or the experience of not being, seen and accepted, even by loving parents. Trauma of this kind does not require overt distress or misfortune . . . and can also lead to the pain of disconnection from the self, occurring as a result of core needs not being satisfied” (23).

This struck a chord (ha) with me concerning my childhood. My parents met my physical needs but didn’t have much sensitivity to my wishes to learn piano. I harped (ha ha) for four years on the topic until, at age ten, I was finally rewarded with lessons (and a $150 piano which I treasured). But their lack of interest in my “attunement” meant that they didn’t care much for my sensitivity as a musician, an artist, or human being. They kept trying to interest me in more “masculine” activities, meaning they did not accept me for who I was. It was a conditional “love,” if you want to call it that. My saving grace, through the years, thankfully, has been the help I received from three talented psychologists: one when I was twenty-four, one when I was in my fifties, and one I see currently in my seventies. Making myself more “loveable” to myself, I believe, made me less available to suffering major diseases or even middling chronic ones.

Maté’s contention is that most all disease is caused by mental or psychological stress that alters the body, making its autoimmune failure more likely one will suffer illness.

There is so much more that Dr. Maté offers to the reader in these 562 pages, but I do want to cite one statement he makes near the end of the book:

“At present there remains powerful resistance to trauma awareness on the part of the medical profession—albeit a resistance more subliminal than deliberate, more passive than active. In the dozens of interview I conducted with medical colleagues for this book, including recent graduates, virtually one of them recalled being taught about the mind-body unity or the profusely documented relationship between, for example, trauma and mental illness or addictions—let alone the links between adversity and physical disease” (487).

I wish all adults in the world could read this book and be pushed to take care of their total health, not just the physical being (if that)—seek out doctors who do see a connection between the mental and physical body and treat their patients accordingly.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Rod McKuen
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | John Boyne
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lorene Scafaria
FRI: My Book World | Wright Thompson, The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi [Emmett Till]

A WRITER'S WIT: SHIRLEY MACLAINE

4/24/2025

I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I’ve written for myself, and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part.
Shirley MacLaine
Author of Out on a Limb
Born April 24, 1934

S. MacLaine

Up Next:
FRI: My Book World | Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Ellen Glasgow
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Barry Hannah
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Shirley MacLaine

A WRITER'S WIT: BARRY HANNAH

4/23/2025

I found out about reviews early on. They’re mostly written by sad men on bad afternoons. That’s probably why I’m less angry than some writers, who are so narcissistic they consider every line of every review, even a thoughtful one, as major treason.
Barry Hannah
Author of High Lonesome
Born April 23, 1942

B. Hannah

Up Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Shirley MacLaine
FRI: My Book World | Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

A WRITER'S WIT: ELLEN GLASGOW

4/22/2025

The only difference between a rut and a grave are the dimensions.
Ellen Glasgow
Author of In This Our Life
Born April 22, 1873

E. Glasgow

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Barry Hannah
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Shirley MacLaine
FRI: My Book World | Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

FINDING THE FOUNDING FISH

4/18/2025

A WRITER'S WIT
I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure—that is all that agnosticism means.
Clarence Seward Darrow
Author of Attorney for the Damned
Born April 18, 1857

C. Darrow

MY BOOK WORLD

McPhee, John. The Founding Fish. New York: Farrar, 2002.

This is the first I have read of the more than fifty books McPhee has published in his ninety-four years on earth, and I have to say it has been a revelation. I’m not one who fishes (maybe . . . for compliments, never the icky, slimy things that come out of the water), but I found this a fascinating history of the American shad. Its life cycle as both a saltwater and freshwater fish. Its boundless energy to overcome humanmade obstacles (dams for one). Its ability to rebound after a period of overfishing. Its delight as food (in spite of its many bones):

“When Alexander Wilson named this fish sapidissima in 1811, he was referring almost certainly to the nutty-buttery succulence of the main muscle, but the roe is the tongue of the buffalo, the tip of the asparagus, the cheek of the halibut, the marrow of the osso bucco” (295).

McPhee’s Appendix consists of nothing but recipes, one of which lists these ingredients:

      2 pounds shad
      1 pair roe
      1 tbs. chopped parsley
      Pepper, salt (if desired)
      1 tbs. butter
      Soft bread crumbs
      Clarified butter
      ½ cup sauterne
      1½ cup chopped mushrooms
      1 tsp. paprika (348)

Yet there are historic objectors to the art/craft/sport of fishing: “The poet Byron said it best: “[T]he art of angling [is] the cruelest, the coldest, and the stupidest of pretended sports” (313).

There you have it! McPhee covers both sides of the story, the equation, the diet!

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Ellen Glasgow
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Barry Hannah
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Shirley MacLaine
FRI: My Book World | Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

A WRITER'S WIT: ISAK DINESEN

4/17/2025

Love, with very young people, is a heartless business. We drink at that age from thirst, or to get drunk; it is only later in life that we occupy ourselves with the individuality of our wine.
Isak Dinesen
Author of Out of Africa
Born April 17, 1885

Up Next:
FRI: My Book World | John McPhee, The Founding Fish
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Ellen Glasgow
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Barry Hannah
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Shirley MacLaine

A WRITER'S WIT: PETER USTINOV

4/16/2025

The young need old men. They need men who are not ashamed of age, not pathetic imitations of themselves . . . . Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth.
Peter Ustinov, Screenwriter
Author of Romanoff and Juliet
Born April 16, 1921

P. Ustinov

Up Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Isak Dinesen
FRI: My Book World | John McPhee, The Founding Fish

A WRITER'S WIT: EVA FIGES

4/15/2025

There is a hidden fear that somehow, if they are only given a chance, women will suddenly do as they have been done by.
Eva Figes
Author of Tales of Innocence and Experience
Born April 15, 1932

E. Figes

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Peter Ustinov
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Isak Dinesen
FRI: My Book World | John McPhee, The Founding Fish

KILLING YOUR MOTHER: A NOVEL

4/11/2025

A WRITER'S WIT
There must always be some pretentiousness about literature, or else no one would take its pains or endure its disappointments.
Glenway Wescott
Author of Apartment in Athens
Born April 11, 1901

G. Wescott

MY BOOK WORLD

Sebold, Alice. The Almost Moon: A Novel. New York: Little, Brown, 2007.

This may be one of those novels that you don’t want to continue after reading the first sentence: When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily”(3). But then then comes the next sentence: “Dementia, as it descends, has a way of revealing the core of the person affected by it”(3). Interesting! you may think. Onward you go . . . and then you are hooked, as I was—queasy feelings subsiding. The middle-aged narrator, Helen, continues her story of caring for her mother for nearly three hundred pages, and honestly, you’re not sure what is going to happen.

Will Helen leave the country, or at least the area of Pennsylvania where she lives? Will she off herself like her father did some years earlier? Will she tell her two young adult daughters she’s murdered their grandmother? Will her ex-husband (whom she tells first of the murder) help her cover it up or escape the police? Will she continue the affair she’s begun with the thirty-year-old son of her best friend? Whoa!

You just can’t believe the behavior of this woman until the author skillfully wends readers through her family’s backstory. Then her life only becomes more complicated, and you may develop sympathy for her. It could happen to you! What will she do? you continue to think, until the very last pages. A true murder mystery—not one of those cozy contrived things. Only the “mystery” here may be why she really done it, and the author presents readers with a plausible and satisfying answer.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Eva Figes
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Peter Ustinov
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Isak Dinesen
FRI: My Book World | John McPhee, The Founding Fish

A WRITER'S WIT: ANNE LAMOTT

4/10/2025

Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
Anne Lamott
Author of Somehow: Thoughts on Love
Born April 10, 1954

A. Lamott

Up Next:
FRI: My Book World | Alice Sebold, The Almost Moon: A Novel
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Eva Figes
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Peter Ustinov
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Isak Dinesen

A WRITER'S WIT: CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

4/9/2025

Genius is the capacity to retrieve childhood at will.
Charles Baudelaire, Poet
Author of Invitation to a Voyage
Born April 9, 1821

C. Baudelaire

Up Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Lamott
FRI: My Book World |Alice Sebold, The Almost Moon: A Novel

A WRITER'S WIT: MARGARET AYER BARNES

4/8/2025

All wars are crusades, or we're made to feel they are. That's just what's so wicked about them. We're made to feel—not think—and people can't think when they feel.
Margaret Ayer Barnes
Author of Years of Grace
Born April 8, 1886

M. A. Barnes

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Charles Baudelaire
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Lamott
FRI: My Book World | Alice Sebold, The Almost Moon: A Novel

IS GRADUATE SCHOOL REAL LIFE?

4/4/2025

A WRITER'S WIT
It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it.
Maya Angelou, Poet
Author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Born April 4, 1928

M. Angelou

MY BOOK WORLD

Taylor, Brandon. Real Life: A Novel. New York: Riverhead, 2020.

In this fairly recent title (a so-called campus novel), young Wallace leaves his home state of Alabama to pursue graduate school in biochemistry at a major university in the Midwest. In most respects the years-long experience does not go well.

As a young black man, Wallace encounters subtle but resistant racism among his colleagues, even though, on the surface, things are cool. Compounding this problem is the fact that he’s out-and-proud gay. In one salty situation, he believes a woman has purposely ruined his experiment, putting him back months in his research. He just can’t prove it, and because of a lifetime of being put down, he doesn’t have the energy to pursue the justice of the matter.

The major relationship he develops is with Miller, an ostensibly straight white man, a handsome man to whom Wallace is quite attracted. Author Taylor subtly but competently creates all the complications that such a relationship can have. Wallace, a bit insecure about his looks and build, feels weird about Miller’s attentions—causing him to send Miller mixed signals. In turn, Miller, rife with his own insecurities, doesn’t believe Wallace is sincere. Repeatedly, they send and receive communications that don’t make clear who they are or what their intentions are. These conflicts lead to a couple of dramatic scenes. One, after sharing the sordid stories of their past, Wallace leaves Miller’s bed in the middle of the night, angering Miller. Second, the two men engage in a fist fight that Wallace loses against the more muscular Miller. They seem to semi-settle their differences, but they certainly do not live together happily ever after. In fact, the denouement of the novel seems to occur when the author returns the cast of characters to the first day they arrive on campus—when everyone’s, including Wallace’s, expectations are high. It seems to be a subtle way the author establishes what real life is all about. The term is tossed about throughout the novel, but in this particular conclusion, readers understand that university life is real life, not just that period that is to follow commencement exercises.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret Ayer Barnes
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Charles Baudelaire
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Lamott
FRI: My Book World | Alice Sebold, The Almost Moon: A Novel

A WRITER'S WIT: JANE GOODALL

4/3/2025

I think the most important thing is to keep active and to hope that your mind stays active.
Jane Goodall
Author of Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe
Born April 3, 1934

J. Goodall

Up Next:
FRI: My Book World | Brandon Taylor, Real Life: A Novel
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret Ayer Barnes
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Charles Baudelaire
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Lamott

A WRITER'S WIT: HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

4/2/2025

Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.
Hans Christian Andersen
Author of The Snow Queen
Born April 2, 1805

H. C. Andersen

Up Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Jane Goodall
FRI: My Book World | Brandon Taylor, Real Life: A Novel

A WRITER'S WIT: JESMYN WARD

4/1/2025

There is power in naming racism for what it is, in shining a bright light on it, brighter than any torch or flashlight. A thing as simple as naming it allows us to root it out of the darkness and hushed conversation where it likes to breed like roaches. It makes us acknowledge it. Confront it.
Jesmyn Ward
Author of Let Us Descend
Born April 1, 1977

J. Ward

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Hans Christian Andersen
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Jane Goodall
FRI: My Book World | Brandon Taylor, Real Life: A Novel

QUEENS OF SOLVING CRIME

3/21/2025

A WRITER'S WIT
There are certainly times when my own everyday life seems to retreat so the life of the story can take me over. That is why a writer often needs space and time, so that he or she can abandon ordinary life and “live” with the characters.
Margaret Mahy
Author of A Lion in the Meadow
Born March 21, 1936

M. Mahy

MY BOOK WORLD

Benedict, Marie. The Queens of Crime: A Novel. New York: St. Martin’s, 2025.

I sometimes think that wish fulfillment may be a driving force in writing fiction. The writer is able to bring to life a scenario by way of fiction that was impossible for its time in real life. Perhaps that is the case for Ms. Benedict, who takes five of the most celebrated female mystery writers of the 1930s and places them as characters in the same novel setting of London: Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, and Baroness Emma Orczy.

The women essentially crash the local Detection Club, which is male dominated in every way. The women plan to solve a local murder not only to show the men in the club that they can but also the local police who otherwise treat them with disdain. The case they tackle involves a young English nurse who makes what is to be a short excursion to France (the ferry provides a day trip). She never returns alive, as her body is discovered in a wooded area. The five queens of crime set about working together to solve the murder. Though they have their squabbles, they see that cooperation is quite useful.

I don’t usually read mysteries, but my curiosity, for some reason, was piqued by this one. I’m not sorry I read it. It’s a page-turner, all right, but an intelligent one! Perhaps I shall read more of the genre.

Up Next:
TUES APR 1: A Writer's Wit | Jesmyn Ward
WEDS APR 2: A Writer's Wit | Hans Christian Andersen
THURS APR 3: A Writer's Wit | Jane Goodall
FRI APR 4: My Book World | Brandon Taylor, Real Life: A Novel

A WRITER'S WIT: LOIS LOWRY

3/20/2025

Submitting to censorship is to enter the seductive world of The Giver: the world where there are no bad words and no bad deeds. But it is also the world where choice has been taken away and reality distorted. And that is the most dangerous world of all.
Lois Lowry
Author of The Giver
Born March 20, 1937

L. Lowry

Up Next:
FRI: My Book World | Marie Benedict, The Queens of Crime: A Novel
NO POSTS MARCH 25-28 | Will return on
TUES APR 1: A Writer's Wit | Jesmyn Ward
WEDS APR 2: A Writer's Wit | Hans Christian Andersen
THURS APR 3: A Writer's Wit | Jane Goodall

A WRITER'S WIT: GARTH GREENWELL

3/19/2025

I guess I think that sex and desire and humiliation are central to my experience of consciousness—to my experience of humanness—and I wanted to explore the ways that they circle around and approach and fail to add up to love, or the ways that those three terms—sex, desire, love—can in some lights seem synonymous and in others like elements entirely alien to one another.
Garth Greenwell
Author of Cleanness
Born March 19, 1978

G. Greenwell

Up Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lois Lowry
FRI: My Book World | Marie Benedict, The Queens of Crime: A Novel

A WRITER'S WIT: WILFRED OWEN

3/18/2025

Be bullied, be outraged, be killed, but do not kill.
Wilfred Owen, Poet
Author of "Arms of the Boy"
Born March 18, 1893

W. Owen

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Garth Greenwell
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lois Lowry
FRI: My Book World | Marie Benedict, The Queens of Crime: A Novel

'PREP': SMARTASSES ON STEROIDS

3/14/2025

A WRITER'S WIT
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Albert Einstein
Author of The Evolution of Physics
Born March 14, 1879

A. Einstein

MY BOOK WORLD

Sittenfeld, Curtis. Prep: A Novel. New York: Random, 2005.

I’m not sure why, but I’m drawn to so-called campus novels—perhaps it is something against which I can hold up my own experiences of adolescence. This one takes place at a prep school, Ault, in Massachusetts. Prep, at least this school, is a cross between an all AP-class high school and a small college occupied by smartasses.

Sittenfeld, given that she is about thirty as she publishes this novel, is perhaps the proper age to recreate such a world, about a half a life ago. The memory is still sharp concerning details she uses: aromas of freshly pubescent boys and girls, smells of institutional food, smells arising amidst the chalk dust and musty books and papers of a long-established institution. She recreates the emotions of that age, yet instead of going home to your parents each night, you’re returning to a dorm to eke out a life with someone you either hate or someone you adore (maybe the sophomore year onward).

Lee Fiora, a fourteen-year-old frosh, is bright enough to be on scholarship, and yet she feels insecure much of the time. At her middle school in South Bend, Indiana, she was a genius, but at Ault she is just one among many—many who seem to be far more ambitious than she is, as well. They seem not to have holes in their education as she does in the field of math. Not only that, but most of the students hail from rich families from the Northeast, and even though some of them befriend her, she never feels quite at home with such people.

One might be jealous of Sittenfeld for writing such an engaging, successful novel the first time around if it weren’t such an enjoyable piece of literature to read. It isn’t just about a bunch of teenagers but it is about those teenagers’ education: academic, personal, literary, social, and cultural. In this novel, they seem to learn it all—in four short and quick years.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Wilfred Owen
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Garth Greenwell
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lois Lowry
FRI: My Book World | Marie Benedict, The Queens of Crime: A Novel

A WRITER'S WIT: MARGARET CRAVEN

3/13/2025

The Indian knows his village and feels for his village as no white man for his country, his town, or even for his own bit of land. His village is not the strip of land four miles long and three miles wide that is his as long as the sun rises and the moon sets. The myths are the village, and the winds and rains. The river is the village, and . . . the talking bird, the owl, who calls the name of the man who is going to die.
Margaret Craven
Author of I Heard the Owl Call My Name
Born March 13, 1901

M. Craven

Up Next:
FRI: My Book World | Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep: A Novel
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Wilfred Owen
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Garth Greenwell
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lois Lowry